Ciena offers Ethernet switch for triple-play

Equipment vendor Ciena today unveiled a new non-blocking Ethernet switch for use in aggregating and transporting triple-play traffic.

Ciena’s 12-rack-unit CN 4350 includes up to eight interface modules, each of which contains 10 SFP-based GigE ports. Next quarter, Ciena plans to introduce another module with 1 10-Gb/s port. The list price is between $170,000 and $190,000, depending on the specific configuration. Ciena hopes the product will compete well against Cisco Systems’ 7609 and Alcatel’s gear.

Three cable companies have already purchased the CN 4350, Ciena said, including Armstrong Cable and Adelphia Communications, which has deployed more than 30 of the new switches.

"There are a couple [telco customers], but we’re just putting it in, so we haven’t been able to announce them yet," said Gary Southwell, Ciena’s vice president of product marketing. The product became generally available in August 2004.

Ciena is touting the gear’s hitless failover, which is especially important in the delivery of video service. "We never drop a packet," Southwell said. "We always deliver packets through the switch with the same fixed latency. We’re up against solutions that need two devices together to meet five-nines reliability. We reduced the number of switches by half."

In a press release issued today by Ciena, Infonetics Research analyst Michael Howard said the 4350, "can be used as an operationally simpler alternative to deploying MPLS all the way to the customer."

The CN 4350 came to Ciena through its acquisition of Internet Photonics, which began developing the product two and a half years ago. But it will work not only with Internet Photonics access gear (targeted generally to cable networks) but also with the access gear Ciena obtained through its acquisition of Catena Networks, which is aimed at advanced DSL applications for telcos.