News from 2013-11-13


Meinberg LANTIME M3000 – The new Synchronization Center for your Application



Today Meinberg announced the general availability of their newest member of the LANTIME family of network synchronization servers. The all new LANTIME M3000 is a 3U rackmount system with a fully modular approach. This modularity supports forming highly customized synchronization systems by combining standard building blocks, resulting in one of the most cost-effective yet ultra-versatile synchronization solution on the market.

The M3000 is the first product in Meinberg's new IMS Series (Intelligent Modular Systems), offering built-in redundancy for synchronization sources, power supplies and cooling in combination with a highly modular slot based chassis supporting hot-swapping and field-expansion capabilities. The 18 slot 3U rackmount design of the LANTIME M3000 allows to use up to 4 power supplies (both AC and DC variants can be mixed and matched), two clock modules, a switch module, a CPU board and 10 I/O slots.

Meinberg's brand new IMS power supplies have been custom made with high efficiency in mind, the two models currently available support either 100-240VAC/VC or 18-72VDC and it is possible to populate the four PWR slots with an arbitrary combination of both AC and DC power supplies, for example if both power sources are available in a rack.

Full redundancy is also optionally available for the clock boards, which form the core element in a LANTIME system. Each clock module has an integrated highly stable oscillator that is disciplined by reference sources like GPS or GLONASS satellites or other signals, for example 1PPS, 10MHz, E1/T1 as well as IRIG Time Codes. The Meinberg MRS concept built into the IMS platform allows to select one or more network reference sources like NTP servers or PTP Master Clocks and all of these time and frequency references can be utilized in a user-defined priority order. Each M3000 comes with two CLK slots and an RSC slot. The M3000 supports a single clock module configuration as well as a fully redundant setup, including a combination of different CLK modules like the Meinberg GPS180 and the GLN180 combined GPS/GLONASS receiver board. If both CLK slots are populated, the new powerful RSC switch card is required to handle smooth transitions from the primary clock module to the backup module in case of a failure or loss of synchronization. The RSC module can work in automatic mode and can be manually controlled, if required.

As the central management hub, the CPU module is another core element of the LANTIME M3000. It runs the management and configuration interfaces and is also responsible for alarm notifications and status information. As with all LANTIME systems, the M3000 CPU board provides highly accurate and reliable NTP synchronization to any SNTP or NTP compatible client. The proven C051F CPU module runs Meinberg’s LANTIME V6 firmware that is common to all members of the LANTIME family, from the compact rail-mount LANTIME M100 to the full featured highly customizable M300 and M900 models. The LTOS V6 firmware platform offers a feature rich newly designed web UI as well as a powerful SNMP management interface for a perfect integration of the LANTIME into your central network management system.

New features like Virtual IP, DSCP and 802.1p Ethernet QoS classification, RADIUS and TACACS+ authentication as well as integrated VLAN support (IEEE 802.1Q) and full IPv6 capabilites ensure that a LANTIME system can be integrated in all kinds of network environments. The NTP performance of the C051F CPU module of the M3000 allows it to respond to up to 10,000 NTP requests per second.

IMS - I/O Modules
Abb.: I/O Modules for the IMS System

Being the first IMS enabled product, the LANTIME M3000 offers 10 I/O slots. While all of these slots can be populated with a user-selectable combination of IMS I/O modules, the first four of them can alternatively be used for additional reference input cards. Each of the two clock boards of the M3000 can be expanded with one MRI and one ESI input card or even two ESI cards. While the MRI card supports the typical MRS input sources like 1PPS, 10MHz, DCLS and AM Timecodes (IRIG/AFNOR/IEEE1344 C37.118), the ESI module accepts variable frequencies (1kHz-10MHz), 1PPS and E1/T1 signals for telecommunication applications. The E1/T1 framed signal input fully supports SSM/BOC information and correctly passes this information on to any E1/T1 output card (IMS-LIU).

All ten I/O slots (MRI1-MRI2, ESI1-ESI2 and I/O1-I/O6) support any combination of I/O output modules. The selection of already available IMS output modules provides a stunning selection of output signals, but will be expanded in the future to add more signals and physical interfaces as needed. The telecom specific LIU output module offering up to 8 E1/T1 outputs and the low-phase-noise 10MHz Sinewave LNO module for broadcasting applications are among the IMS modules that are already available at market launch. The standard output signals like pulses (1PPS, 1PPM and freely programmable pulses) and frequencies (10MHz, 2.048MHz, frequency synthesizer 1kHz-10MHz) are provided by two versatile I/O cards named BPE and CPE. Both of these two modules have been designed to cover a wide range of interface and signal/protocol requirements. They feature a two-tier architecture with a back-end and front-end. While the back-end is responsible for internally routing the backplane IMS synchronization signals (in case of the BPE) or for autonomously generating a wide range of different signals by using a microprocessor (on a CPE), the front-end makes a selection of the signals available on physical connectors. Due to this design, it is very easy to support a large number of different electrical or optical physical interfaces, like BNC, SMA, Twinax, 2-pin DFK, DSUB9 and ST/SC FO connectors.

CPE (Configurable Port Expansion)
CPE Front-End :: Back-End

Due to the modularity, all modules are hot-swappable as well as field-replaceable. The end user can easily expand their synchronization solution by adding more modules to the M3000 when required, making this one of the most scalable and flexible synchronization solutions available today.

The I/O slots of the M3000 can also be used to add additional network interfaces by using one of the IMS LNE cards with either 4x10/100 Ethernet or 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports. The theoretically supported maximum number of Ethernet interfaces is 41 ports (10xLNEx4 Ports +1 CPU port), allowing all kinds of different network layouts and separation of physical segments. The LTOS V6 bonding feature enables the user to configure high availability network connections with redundant physical links in order to survive cable and switch failures without a service interruption.

IEEE1588 (Precision Time Protocol, PTP) applications are supported by the new IMS-TSU module with a combined RJ45/SFP Gigabit Ethernet port and an integrated powerful 1GHz dual core service processor, allowing to synchronize hundreds of PTP slave clocks. The Meinberg IMS-TSU module is one of the most flexible PTP solutions on the market, supporting 1-step and 2-step mode, Layer 2 (Ethernet), Layer 3 (IPv4 and IPv6), End-to-End and Peer-to-Peer Delay measurements as well as Unicast, Multicast and Hybrid modes. The Meinberg PTP implementation supports default profile as well as telecom profile, enterprise profile and power profile operation. An IMS-TSU module can be configured to act as a Master-only port, a Slave-only port or dynamically switch between these modes (Ordinary Clock). When running in slave mode, the board can be used as a synchronization reference and synchronizes to an external PTP master on the network. Each M3000 can be populated with up to 10 IMS-TSU modules, each of them with its own independent configuration. This offers the possibility to build PTP measurement systems as well as redundant master clocks or PTP translators which, for example, are synchronized by a remote Telecom Profile Grandmaster over a WAN connection and in turn become a local Power Profile Grandmaster Clock for the local PTP slave clocks.

Although the LANTIME M3000 is available with an Active Cooling Module (ACM) with redundant fans and integrated temperature and status monitoring, it is designed to be operated in a fan-less configuration as long as there is enough rack space to allow airflow from the bottom to the top cover of the chassis. Fans, if required, can be added at any time and are field-replaceable in case of a failure.

Active Cooling Module - ACM
Active Cooling Module - ACM

The chassis concept of the M3000 ensures that main connectivity is provided on one single side. This includes power input as well as all synchronization and network input/output interfaces. The front panel with the backlit LC display and a service USB port as well as the serial console port also offers access to the ACM fan cartridge slot and to the menu buttons for operating the LCD menus, if required. It is possible to use the rack mounting brackets on both sides of the LANTIME M3000 chassis.

For more information please visit our product website: LANTIME M3000


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