Mac Mountain Selects netElastic vRouter for LightCraft Broadband-as-a-Service Platform

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - PrZen -- netElastic, a leading innovator in software solutions for broadband, today announced that Mac Mountain, a Vermont-based infrastructure investment firm founded by Alex Rozek, the former co-CEO of Boston Omaha, turned to netElastic's virtualized router platform to service its LightCraft operational arm.

LightCraft, which delivers a Broadband-as-a-Service platform, handles the design, building and daily operations of fiber networks for municipalities and developers. Facing a shortage of IPv4 addresses and service expansion across Vermont Communications Union Districts (CUDs) and nationally, LightCraft required a solution that was scalable, cost-effective and easily inserted into its existing network without requiring significant changes to its architecture. Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) functionality was a key decision factor to keep IPv4 address space as small and affordable as possible while also allowing a graceful migration to IPv6 as a key requirement for sustained growth.

To solve these challenges, LightCraft adopted a network virtualization strategy with netElastic's virtual router (vRouter) software. It selected netElastic software on standard x86 hardware for its ability to be seamlessly inserted into its existing networking stack. netElastic's dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 feature set and CGNAT capability met this requirement handily.

Running netElastic software on x86 Dell PowerEdge XR11 and XR5610 telco servers with 100G capacity, LightCraft's Broadband-as-a-Service platform delivers routing, subscriber management and CGNAT with centralized GUI-based management to four of the 10 CUDs in their stable, with more to come. netElastic software can be deployed bare metal or on virtual machines, giving LightCraft options towards its ultimate goal of virtualization in the future.

"Deploying netElastic into our network was painless and required little support, though the netElastic team was responsive when needed," said Will Duquette, Director of NOC at LightCraft. "The routers peer directly with our core routers and provide an easy-to- scale vBNG for our growing fiber-to-the-home business. CGNAT is critical to keeping our IPv4 space as small and affordable as possible. We encountered no unexpected hurdles—the process was smooth."

"We are proud to support LightCraft's nationwide expansion with our CGNAT solution," said Weixiao Liu, CEO of netElastic. "LightCraft's seamless integration, smooth IPv4-to- IPv6 migration, and ability to scale on standard COTS hardware demonstrate exactly why service providers are moving to virtualized networking. We look forward to powering their growth for years to come."

About netElastic

netElastic provides virtualized routing solutions purpose-built for broadband service providers. netElastic developed one of the industry's first virtual broadband network gateways (vBNGs) including CGNAT from the ground up. netElastic is based in sunny Santa Clara, California.

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