view printer-friendly version

Ciena Unveils Foundation for Telco and Cable Triple Play Networks with the First Carrier-Grade Ethernet Services Provisioning Switch

CN 4350 Provides Guaranteed Quality of Service and Drastically Cuts Operational Expense for Delivering Packet Voice, Video and Data Services to Residential and Commercial Users

Ciena® Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced the CN 4350™ Ethernet Services Provisioning Switch. The CN 4350 is the first carrier-grade Ethernet platform specifically designed for telco and cable service providers to deliver triple play services to residential and commercial customers over a converged packet network, including high-value Ethernet private line and local area network (LAN) services. Compared to competing triple play architectures based on enterprise-grade switches and routers, the CN 4350 lowers combined capital and operational costs by up to 70 percent.

Ciena’s CN 4350 is already delivering a variety of video, voice and data services in multiple customer networks, including a deployment with ARMSTRONG Cable, a large U.S. cable operator with subscribers across five states. The platform is generally available and additional deployments and trials are underway with other telco and cable service providers, including Adelphia Communications Corporation.

"We've been tracking the gradual addition of Ethernet capabilities into optical equipment, so the extent of Ethernet functions in a WDM chassis in Ciena's CN 4350 Ethernet Services Provisioning Switch is a pleasant surprise for us," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "Ciena’s CN 4350 gives telco and cable service providers a platform specifically designed to support Ethernet and triple play applications, which can be used as an operationally simpler alternative to deploying MPLS all the way to the customer."

Designed specifically to deliver voice, video and data over a converged packet switched network, the CN 4350 enables Ciena’s customers to broaden their services portfolio without increasing operating expenses and to improve services margins without complicating the network. As an example, ARMSTRONG Cable, which provides cable television, broadband Internet and VoIP services to customers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky, has deployed Ciena’s CN 4350 to deliver high-quality video, voice and data services over its converged, high capacity network.

“As video services move to All Digital Simulcast, Everything On-Demand, and High Definition Digital Services along with enhanced data and voice services, the carrier-grade, scalable and cost effective Gigabit Ethernet switching and transport platform that the CN 4350 provides is essential to success in today’s competitive environment.” said Michael Giobbi, vice president, engineering and technology, ARMSTRONG Cable. “Ciena’s CN 4350 is a key part of an initiative to create a converged network that is ultra-reliable, fast to deploy, can scale capacity to meet our growing demand, and, in the same platform, has the QoS intelligence required to ensure service delivery for subscribers.”

While triple play services are testing the traffic management capabilities of telco and cable networks, they are also creating new opportunities for service providers to grow revenues. To capitalize on this market, Ciena’s CN 4350 combines full mesh 160 gigabits per second fabric, VirtualWire VLAN switching, GbE and WDM transport interfaces, and carrier-grade reliability to provide the same service performance and operational simplicity of time-division multiplexed and gigabit Ethernet multiplexing, but with the cost-effectiveness and bandwidth efficiency of Ethernet switching. In contrast to general purpose data-switching architectures, the CN 4350 delivers absolute QoS and assigns each service its own “virtual wire” with guaranteed end-to-end bandwidth and performance, which is critical for concurrently switching and transporting best effort and QoS-sensitive services at 100 percent utilization to ensure optimal performance and service level requirements.

“From broadband access to multiservice internetworking and from optical Ethernet to service edge routing, Ciena delivers integrated platforms optimized for video that also support voice and data. The CN 4350 is the most recently announced product within Ciena’s focus of evolving network infrastructure for new applications. It addresses key business challenges for our cable and telco customers, and fits seamlessly into their existing operational models,” said Laura Howard, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Ciena. “Combining the best of Ciena’s metro optical transport and Ethernet switching technologies, the CN 4350 positions us to meet the surge in demand for reliable, cost-effective platforms to support applications ranging from IPTV and on-demand video to Ethernet private lines and Ethernet LAN services.”

Carrier-Grade Ethernet Switching for Triple Play Networks Currently deployed in service provider central offices and cable headends, Ciena’s CN 4350 includes a number of features that make it a true carrier-grade Ethernet switch with no single point of failure for non-stop triple play services. The platform approaches 99.9999 percent availability by supporting non-service affecting software updates, a SONET-style embedded signaling channel for performance monitoring, integrated optical protection switching, and hardware-accelerated Layer 2 restoration.

The CN 4350 supports fully redundant power, fans, switch fabric and controller modules, has separate data and control planes, and is NEBS Level 3 certified. Ciena’s fault-tolerant switching and control complex, which provides persistent forwarding and maintenance of the spanning tree topology during switchover, provides highly reliable converged services without the cost and administrative complexity of dual routers at every location running virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP).