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CIENA ANNOUNCES COREDIRECTOR SERVICES GATEWAY SOLUTIONS FOR METRO DATA NETWORKING AND CONVERGENCE WITH IP/MPLS CORE

CoreDirector Expands into Layer 2 Applications with Ethernet Interfaces and Packet-Aware Intelligence to Become a Services Gateway for Converged Data Networks

Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN) today announced new data networking solutions that will enable service providers to reduce equipment costs, accelerate response time to service requests, and improve service availability and the quality of service for metro data services aggregation, plus provide interconnection to converged IP/MPLS core networks. These data solutions, supporting Ciena’s strategic evolution to a leading provider of intelligent service creation and delivery solutions, will be featured at SUPERCOMM in Chicago, June 22-24, 2004, at the company’s booth (#23815) and in the Optical Internetworking Forum’s World Interoperability Demonstration.

A key part of Ciena’s Core to Door™ strategy of delivering revenue-rich services across the network, the new data solutions, including data line cards with native Ethernet interfaces and packet-aware intelligence, are designed for the market-leading CoreDirector® switching system and enable service providers to efficiently aggregate metro data services and interconnect them to a converged IP/MPLS core network.  Leveraging the new data solutions and its high capacity, a single CoreDirector system enables inter-exchange carriers (IXCs) to cost-effectively aggregate data services from multiple add-drop multiplexers (ADMs), multiservice provisioning platforms (MSPPs) and/or data devices, while replacing digital cross-connects and providing lower-cost Ethernet connections to edge routers.

These Layer 2 features represent an expansion in CoreDirector’s capabilities and addressable market and deliver key benefits to service providers’ data services as compared to delivering the services over a pure packet network, including automated service set-up to expedite time-to-revenue, SONET/SDH levels of reliability and quality of service, and end-to-end data service management.

“As service providers have rolled out frame relay, ATM and IP services over the years, they have built parallel networks to support them resulting in an expensive and redundant infrastructure to operate and maintain,” said Steve Alexander, chief technical officer and general manager of Ciena’s Core Networking Group. “As a metro data services gateway, CoreDirector delivers a ‘no compromises’ solution to data network convergence with a packet-aware optical switch that combines Ciena’s optical intelligence and reliability with the ubiquity of Ethernet technology to drive cost and complexity out of the network.”

CoreDirector’s data services are delivered by 1 Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces that are compatible with the existing CoreDirector product family and are designed to provide standards-based adaptation, transport and control capabilities for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint data services. A 20-port Gigabit Ethernet Line Module, the first in a suite of data solutions for the CoreDirector family, is expected to be available in the third calendar quarter. Key benefits of the new specific data services and standards supported by CoreDirector include:

• Cost-Efficient Ethernet Interfaces – Data services over optical networks today require expensive Packet over SONET/SDH (POS) interfaces on routers. Using its new Ethernet line modules, CoreDirector reduces equipment costs by 30 to 50 percent and its service multiplexing technology translates into more efficient port utilization for further cost reductions.

• Intelligent Packet Conversion & Class of Service Support – CoreDirector uses Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), an ITU standard, for mapping packets into frames for transport over SONET/SDH networks. Carriers can now drive additional revenue through support of the differentiated and guaranteed classes of service delivered by CoreDirector.

• Efficient Bandwidth Utilization – By using virtual concatenation (VCAT), CoreDirector enables service providers to dynamically size the service bandwidth to the specific requirements of the customer by “fusing” together sub-rate connections to create service capacities from 50 Mbps up to 10 Gbps. This provides much greater flexibility than forcing customers into one of the standard POS service capacities (OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192).

• Improved Data Service Availability – CoreDirector combines intelligent mesh functionality with traditional SONET/SDH protection and restoration schemes to deliver improved levels of data service availability and QoS. Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) is also implemented for dynamic adjustment of service bandwidth.

Services Gateway Application
In the traditional pure packet network, metro data services coming into an IXC point of presence on data TDM circuits terminate on multiple ADMs and/or MSPPs and are directly cross-connected to edge routers that forward the services to the core packet network. These edge routers generally interface to the cross-connect and core packet network via expensive SONET/SDH ports using legacy POS technology. With CoreDirector’s Ethernet ports, packet-aware intelligence and high capacity, a single CoreDirector system can be used to aggregate the metro data services and interconnect them to the edge routers via Ethernet ports at a significantly lower cost.

About CoreDirector
Ciena’s CoreDirector is an intelligent, high-capacity switching system that incorporates the functionality of ADMs/MSPPs, digital cross-connects and optical cross-connects in a single unit that automates network operations and improves network reliability. It is the market-leading switch based on deployments worldwide with leading services providers, such as AT&T, BT, Sprint and TELMEX.