Ciena unveils new Ethernet access gear from Worldwide Packets

Ciena today unveiled two new Ethernet access products to come from its acquisition of Worldwide Packets (WWP).

The CN 3920 Service Delivery Switch is a small one-rack-unit customer-located device with eight 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports facing the customers and four gigabit Ethernet (or 100 Mb/s) small form-factor pluggables (SFPs) for uplinks.

“It’s targeted at fairly entry-level business services,” said Malcolm Loro, director of portfolio management for Ciena’s Ethernet Business Services group. “You start as a Fast Ethernet switch and upgrade to GigE.”

The CN 3911 Service Delivery Switch is an enclosed, environmentally hardened version of a similar device. Like the 3920, it has eight 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, but it also includes two dual-mode GigE/100 Mb/s SFPs. It also includes two ports for voice-over-IP gateways to the legacy telephone network. Most importantly, the 3911 can be deployed outdoors – on a pole or on the outside wall of a building, for example.

The 3911 clearly resembles an optical network terminal (ONT) – the customer premises gear in fiber-to-the-premises networks. And while the device could be used for that application, Ciena is marketing it mainly for business services. Its suitability for residential networks is impeded by the tight economics of that application, Ciena said, but the 3911 could be more easily cost-justified by, for example, utility companies that defray some of the cost by applying the gear to remote meter-reading in addition to consumer services.

The two new products announced today are the first to be both conceived by WWP and debuted by Ciena. Ciena has already rebranded WWP’s other gear. For example, the aggregation device that the 3920 and 3911 would feed into upstream, the CN 5305, is Ciena’s name for WWP’s LE 3300.