Ciena Expands Ethernet Service Delivery Portfolio

Ciena Corp. announced Monday it has expanded its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio to include three new models – CN 3960, CN 3940 and CN 5140 – to aid service providers in right-sizing gear for Carrier Ethernet deployments of all shapes and sizes, such as business Ethernet enterprise locations, backhaul from wireless cell sites, multitenant unit buildings and outside plant cabinets.

These new models are in addition to four Ciena rolled out with the CESD portfolio launch in October 2008. These include the CN 5305, CN 3911, CN 3920 and the LE 311V.

Dave Parks, director of product marketing for Ciena, said the additions are designed to help service providers address the market for Carrier Ethernet more cost-effectively by matching the capacity and capabilities with the need.

The CN 3960 Service Delivery Switch is purpose-built customer premises equipment for 10 gigabit service delivery. It’s meant for deployment at a company headquarters or data center where normally, service providers would have to deploy something too big and costly, said Parks. The CN 3960, in contrast, is small and consumer little power.

The CN 3940 Service Delivery Switch provides Ethernet service delivery on premises or first-tier aggregation in a 1 ru size. With 20 ports, it’s a step up from the existing CN 3920 8-port switch.

The new CN 5140 Service Aggregation Switch is similar to the CN 3940, but is temperature-hardened for outside plant deployment. The existing CN 3911 also is an outdoor unit.

In addition to the new releases, Ciena has upgraded its CN 5305 Service Aggregation Switch to support MPLS, making it the only Carrier Ethernet switch to seamlessly interwork between encapsulation formats Q-in-Q, PBB-TE and MPLS/H-VPLS.

The LE 311V also supports MPLS, and Ciena is planning to add MPLS support to the entire line of Ethernet switches, Parks said.

In addition, Parks said all the switches have common OS and management-to-ease operation and they automate provisioning to help cut costs. “The battle is won and lost on time to market, so we’ve added automation to enable that,” Parks said.

The new CESD models are available immediately. Ciena’s CESD portfolio is used by more than 100 carriers, wireless service providers, cable operators and new entrants in 25 countries.

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