Marconi sells industry’s first 10 Gb/s ATM card

Marconi PLC today announced the industry’s first sale of a 10 Gb/s asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interface. The interface was purchased by the U.S. Department of Defense in late December for a pair of 480 Gb/s BXR-48000 switch-routers the DOD purchased from Marconi in September. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The DOD, which now has $1.3-billion worth of Marconi gear, will use the new equipment for “classified applications in multiservice broadband network expansion projects,” said Marconi.

In addition to frame relay and ATM traffic, the new interface is capable of managing high definition video, distributed computing and storage networking, the company said. Its chief duty is aggregating large amounts of voice and data traffic.

But the Department of Defense might be particularly interested in the technology’s potential for security. The government had been performing network-based encryption (also called type-one encryption) with ATM at 2.5 Gb/s and is now testing the practice for 10 Gb/s speeds, said Gerry Kolosvary, president of Marconi Federal, a subsidiary that serves the federal government.

Cisco also offers 10 Gb/s ATM with its MGX 8950 switch, but has yet to close a sale for the equipment, according to Marconi. “They’re not selling it,” a Marconi spokesperson said of the Cisco gear. “They’re talking about how neat it would be.”

Kolosvary called Cisco’s introduction of the high-speed ATM module “jumping on the bandwagon,” pointing out that Cisco has spent years evangelizing Internet Protocol as the ideal convergence technology.

Calls made to Cisco for comment were not immediately returned.

The Marconi sale is “encouraging news for a telecommunications industry that needs examples of concrete advancement to help reinvigorate the market,” said Roz Roseboro, program director for RHK’s Switching and Routing program.