Business need

Increased competition and consumer sophistication demand that residential service providers offer a differentiated suite of Triple Play services—blended voice, video and data—to capture or retain high-value customers. With traditional basic service revenues flat at best, providers need the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of a converged IP-based environment to create a wider variety of applications with more personalized experiences that garner both loyalty and higher margins.

Challenges

Current metro networks based on SONET/SDH or even first-generation (i.e. 16 wavelength) DWDM systems lack the scalability to handle the growth of Video On Demand (VOD) and Internet video. Legacy service edge routers and BRAS systems lack the Quality of Service (QoS) to reliably support anything but best-effort Internet access. And traditional broadband access nodes lack the throughput and multicast scalability to meaningfully handle video.

Solution

Service providers need to build a next-generation scalable, IP-friendly network from the ground up. But they need to avoid the capital expense, operational complexity and performance challenge of deploying IP/MPLS routers everywhere. In short, Triple Play providers need to construct a simplified IP service architecture which limits IP routers to the service hub (i.e. Video Headend/Hub Office) and uses service-aware Ethernet transport to cost-effectively extend QoS-enabled IP services to the access network.

Ciena's offerings

Ciena’s carrier-grade FlexSelect™ for Ethernet solution provides a triple-play optimized metro aggregation/distribution network at one-third lower Total Cost of Ownership than a router-centric solution. The CN 4200® FlexSelect Advanced Service Platform provides service-aware connection-oriented Ethernet transport between the service edge router and the broadband access nodes. The platform also incorporates hierarchical QoS to guarantee bandwidth per service, per customer and supports both OTN-based Layer 1 multicast among CN 4200 nodes and Layer 2/3 IGMP multicast from each CN 4200 to its subtending access nodes. An integrated 40 wavelength ROADM allows you to add capacity when and where needed. The CNX-5Plus™ is a compact, modular Broadband Loop Carrier (BLC) that enables carriers to selectively add ADSL/VDSL-based triple-play services to the installed base of narrowband digital loop carriers.

Benefits

• Guarantee latency, jitter, throughput and loss parameters to deliver appropriate performance to charge for tiered or pay-per-use services supporting VoIP, HDTV, gaming, streaming audio/video, basic/premium Internet access and more
• Eliminate the need for standalone Ethernet switches or IP routers at the end office and optimize the utilization of expensive router capacity at the service hub
• Eliminate MAC table and VLAN address scaling issues through connection-oriented Ethernet tunneling and flexible label manipulation techniques
• Provision bandwidth capacity per site in 155 Mb/s through 10 Gb/s increments based on unique hybrid electrical/optical ROADM functionality
• Shorten the loop-length to maximize last mile bandwidth to support multiple video channels and HDTV