What is an Accedian Networks MetroNID TE?

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Stereodude

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We have an Accedian Networks MetroNID TE in our office in front of our Cisco 2921 router on our internet and I can't decipher what it is. It's the first box in the chain of networking equipment with Ethernet coming in and going out and onto the Cisco 2921 (router). The Accedian website doesn't really help. Sure, I see it mentions tons of networking buzzwords, but it's not clear to me what the box actually does. I believe it's likely programmable, but is it a firewall, traffic shaping / QoS box, hardware VPN, etc.?

We don't have any local IT, no one in the office knows much about the rack of equipment, the local guy who managed it before has left the company some time ago... Now we're changing our internet provider to significantly upgrade our internet bandwidth and the remote IT folks overseas in the HQ just told us to plug in the cable modem and it would work. Needless to say it didn't just work. No idea if we should be plugging into the MetroNID or straight into the Cisco 2921. We tried both methods and neither worked.

Time to make IT do their job... :frusty:
 
Handruin

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I've never heard of it but that's not saying much. I don't work much on the network side of IT things. The description makes me think it's some kind of VPN device between campus locations?
 
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Striker

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Have you tried connecting the cable modem directly to a computer to make sure it is working correctly?
 
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Stereodude

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Striker said:
Have you tried connecting the cable modem directly to a computer to make sure it is working correctly?
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Yeah, we did and it worked fine.

IT worked with us and we have it partially working now. But, still no clarity on what the MetroNID is. IT had us connect the cable modem to a different box and the MetroNID is no longer in the loop best I can tell. Unfortunately, we're only getting about 1/10th of the bandwidth we're supposed to (still about 3x faster than the old setup), but they tell us one of the hardware boxes doing VPN and some other stuff is a bottleneck and they're replacing it in about a month.

My best guess is the MetroNID was the device that limited our connection speed to whatever tier of service we were paying for from the last provider.
 
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Stereodude

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Newtun said:
Your company's IT VP has a nephew that works for Accedian?
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Might have been. There's no US IT people, and no one on the European IT team (that covers the US too) seems to know anything about the box. It's sort of all a mystery.
 
Howell

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The NID is the last piece of ISP equipment before handing off to internal wiring. Over time the cost of a NID has decreased such that including intelligence into the device so that more precise monitoring and alerting back to the ISP is financially feasible.
Typically the NID would not have routing capability but would have VLAN capabilities. The next device toward you would be your router where you have assigned your static IP addresses.
You do not need a NID with cable internet connections as that capability would be built into the cable box.
 
Howell

Howell

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I also don't know why you would downgrade from a fiber or metroE connection to a cable connection. You are going backwards.
 
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