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CIENA UNVEILS STRATEGY FOR NEXT-GENERATION, INTEGRATED INTELLIGENT OPTICAL SWITCHING

Service Providers Will Be Able To Address Any Switching Application With a Single System Using CoreDirector's Integrated All-Optical and Opto-Electronic Layers

Ciena Corporation (CIEN), a global leader in intelligent optical networking, today announced its integrated intelligent optical switching strategy, ending the debate over which technology - all-optical (OO) or opto-electronic (OEO) - is better by enabling service providers to capitalize on the best of both approaches in a single, seamlessly integrated intelligent switching system. Ciena outlined a strategic evolutionary path building upon its MultiWave CoreDirector™ intelligent optical core switch as the foundation for an integrated intelligent switch that utilizes both all-optical and OEO technologies.

Ciena plans to integrate a pure optical switch fabric into the current CoreDirector platform, which will also simultaneously support the system's currently available sophisticated OEO switch fabric. The company is designing its new all-optical switch fabric as a modular enhancement to CoreDirector.

The strategy of integrating both all-optical and OEO switching fabrics in one intelligent system supports CoreDirector's goal of evolving to meet service providers' growing networking needs. The integration of pure optical switching capabilities into CoreDirector, along with LightWorks™ intelligent optical networking software and ON-Center™ service and network management applications, provides unmatched switching versatility across a wide range of bandwidth granularities. CoreDirector's integrated intelligent switching system is designed to provision, groom and protect at the fiber, wavelength band, wavelength and sub-wavelength levels, down to the STS-1 level, thereby optimizing bandwidth management across the entire spectrum.

The combination of OO and OEO capabilities in an integrated intelligent switching system will maximize CoreDirector's scalability, flexibility and efficiency by allowing service providers to fine-tune the mix of OO and OEO capabilities based on varying traffic characteristics and application requirements across their networks.

Unlike other approaches based on deploying separate OO and OEO switches, use of common integrated intelligence and advanced software in a seamlessly integrated system should enhance capital and operating efficiencies while simplifying network architectures and enabling service providers to easily deploy a full range of optical services. The ability to administer the entire optical network, end-to-end, from a single control plane is one of the greatest benefits of Ciena's integrated approach.

"Ciena's strategy in the intelligent optical switching market has always been focused on addressing service providers' real-world business needs with a flexible platform that can evolve as needs change," said Patrick Nettles, chairman and CEO of Ciena. "With a seamless, integrated intelligent optical switching system, Ciena intends to continue delivering economical, cutting-edge, all-optimal solutions to maximize efficiencies and create new revenue streams."

Ciena's All-Optimal Approach

Recognizing that both opto-electronic and all-optical switching have important roles in service provider networks, Ciena's strategy integrates these two technologies in one seamless, intelligent platform that matches the right mix of technologies with specific switching needs at any point in the network, eliminating the need for single-purpose switches. This approach is customer-focused rather than technology-driven, and is designed to provide simplified networks with optimal efficiency and the intelligence, performance, flexibility and unconstrained scalability required for delivering differentiated, next-generation optical services.

Ciena plans to extend the current CoreDirector platform to manage both all-optical switching applications and the sophisticated applications that CoreDirector currently manages, which involve an optical signal conversion to an electronic form. By applying both OO and OEO technologies, CoreDirector is designed to allow any given network POP to be as all-optical or as opto-electronic as is needed. Using a single platform managed by unified software, Ciena believes that CoreDirector will enable service providers to save up to 50 percent on capital and operations costs while maximizing network intelligence for optimal efficiency and for creating customized next-generation services.

Under this strategy, Ciena's current CoreDirector will serve as the integrated system's sophisticated OEO switching layer, enabling service providers to turn raw bandwidth into value-added optical services. CoreDirector's software and OEO switching fabric allow carriers to access bandwidth in any-size increments (from 50 megabits to 40 gigabits) and to "groom" bandwidth for highly customized service offerings over a more fully utilized and efficient network. For simple switching of wavelengths, bands of wavelengths and fibers, the pure optical switching fabric to be integrated into the existing platform will further enhance CoreDirector's efficiency and scalability.

"Many network planners will undoubtedly have difficulty in choosing between all-optical and OEO switching because of the merits of each technology. Ciena has taken advantage of its leading-edge, optical engineering talent to develop a pragmatic solution that will ultimately allow its customers to exploit the strengths of both approaches," said Mark Lutkowitz, Vice President of Optical Networking Research at Communications Industry Researchers. "Ciena's strategy of integrating all-optical and OEO switching will eliminate the costly and cumbersome management of disparate systems and should allow carriers the flexibility to automatically select the appropriate technology to meet the specific switching needs at any point in the network. Service providers will use such a device to accommodate new service offerings and to improve the economics of deploying and operating high-capacity networks that require an ever-increasing amount of agility."

Lutkowitz continued, "The integrated CoreDirector platform has the potential to give network operators the advantage of scalability and efficiency of all-optical switching for fiber, band and wavelength management, while also providing the option of using electronics to flexibly access and groom traffic, resulting in more efficient network utilization as well as in a wider range of service offerings."

Launched earlier this year, Ciena's CoreDirector is already being deployed by major service providers such as Broadwing and Genuity. When Ciena launched CoreDirector with its OEO switching fabric, the company delivered the most challenging-to-build element of an integrated switching system. Ciena believes that no other optical networking company has an integrated switching approach that offers CoreDirector's ability to access bandwidth at all levels while providing the cost efficiencies and scalability associated with all-optical switching. By using a common software-defined intelligence to select optimal routing, grooming and protection schemes from a full portfolio of fiber, band, wavelength and sub-wavelength options, CoreDirector will enable service providers to optimize bandwidth utilization and overall network switching and transport efficiency.

Ciena's modular growth path should provide CoreDirector customers with an immediate competitive advantage over service providers expecting to deploy wavelength-only optical switches in the next 12 to 18 months. CoreDirector's advanced OEO foundation enables service providers to begin offering new, differentiated services like optical VPNs (virtual private networks), wave services, OC-n/STM-n services, and fractional gigabit Ethernet services, while offering a clear evolutionary path to improve efficiencies, flexibility and scalability as network needs evolve.

"We believe software-driven intelligence should harmonize all switching technologies. That's why we are providing the flexibility and intelligence of integrated OEO and all-optical switching in a single system," Ciena's Nettles said. "Over the past three years, Ciena has built the industry's leading intelligent optical switch as a foundation for a seamlessly integrated solution that is designed to help our customers build carrier-class, service-oriented networks applying the optimal technology for each application."