The Alcatel-Lucent 7250 Service Access Switch (SAS) establishes a new benchmark by providing access to more advanced business Carrier Ethernet VPN services to enterprise. The Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS gives service providers and cable MSOs a competitive edge by cost effectively extending the service intelligence to the customer premises. With increased intelligence at the customer premises, the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS provides access to more enhanced virtual private LAN services (VPLS) and virtual private wire services (VPWS). In addition, the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS supports circuit emulation services (CES) to allow service providers to transparently carry TDM-based voice and data applications across an IP/MPLS backbone. For enterprise customers, the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS gives them a competitive advantage by reducing their lease line costs if connectivity is provided by the carrier or cable MSO as well as increasing the services they can provide to their own internal customers. With its MPLS, circuit emulation, hierarchical quality of service (H-QoS), IEEE 802.1q virtual LAN (VLAN) stacking, and wire-speed non-blocking architecture, the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS has the versatility, flexibility and reliability to provide access to a whole new stream of revenue opportunities for service providers and feature enhancements and cost savings to private networks. These advanced features, along with extensive OAM tools, a modular design featuring hot-swappable modules with redundant configuration options and a wide selection of interfaces allow service providers, cable MSOs and enterprise customers to cost-effectively deliver a suite of Carrier Ethernet VPN services, with strict per-application SLAs. The advanced capabilities of the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS seamlessly extend the service-aware capabilities of the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Services Switch ( ESS), the Alcatel-Lucent 7710 Service Router (SR) and the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) nodes located in the IP/MPLS core, edge and access networks. Finally, advanced VPN services and policy activation are seamlessly provisioned across the Alcatel-Lucent 7250 SAS, Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS, Alcatel-Lucent 7710 SR and Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR product portfolios using the Alcatel-Lucent 5620 SAM.