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Ciena’s CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform Among Top Honored in Diamond Technology Reviews from Broadband Gear Report

Next-generation multiservice transport and aggregation platform recognized by panel of MSO technical executives for outstanding technical features, performance, and network flexibility

Ciena® Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that its CN 4200™ FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform has been awarded 4.5 out of 5 diamonds in Broadband Gear Report’s 2006 Diamond Technology Reviews. Established last year, the Reviews recognize leading products, software and services that help cable and broadband providers increase the reliability, efficiency and capacity of their HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) networks to improve profitability and overall customer satisfaction.

“Based solely on the assessment of senior technical executives from major MSOs, this award is an industry honor and affirms the CN 4200’s technical innovations and unique ability to provide unprecedented network flexibility, manageability, adaptability and investment protection to our customers,” said Steve Alexander, chief technology officer at Ciena. "From its software-programmable ports and transparent OTN networking to its sub-wavelength grooming, the CN 4200 enables MSOs to implement a converged transport solution based on DWDM to grow bandwidth capacity and lower operational expense.”

The CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform is a multiservice transport and aggregation platform capable of on-demand support for any transport protocol—including SONET/SDH, Ethernet, storage (Fibre Channel, FICON, ESCON) or video—at any speed on any available port. The CN 4200 has been selected by multiple MSOs and other broadband providers worldwide, including three of the top six MSOs in the U.S., and most recently by Cox Communications for its metro and regional networks.

The Diamond Technology Reviews were judged by a panel of senior engineering executives from major MSOs, including representatives from Comcast, Time Warner, Charter and Bright House. The full results of the judging will be published both in Broadband Gear Report as well as a special print issue to be distributed at SCTE’s Cable-Tec Expo 2006 in Denver, Colo. Ciena’s CN 4200 will be on display at the Expo from June 20-23 in Booth #731.

“Our panel of engineering experts wasn’t shy about expressing their opinions in this year's Diamond Technology Reviews,” said Laura Hamilton, vice president and editor-in-chief at Broadband Gear Report. “The extremely solid score that Ciena’s CN 4200 FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform received indicates that the judges were truly impressed with the solution's capabilities."

As a cornerstone of Ciena's FlexSelect Architecture, the CN 4200 is the industry's first platform to offer a universal line card with individual user-programmable ports designed to meet the changing needs of end-user applications with point-and-click ease. Its standards-based architecture enables the migration of legacy infrastructure to an on-demand, service-selectable network that protects existing investment in current-generation services while empowering the network to deliver forward-looking packet services that are more cost effective to deploy, scale and manage.