Cisco Announces Optical Networking Solutions For Service Providers

Cisco has announced a series of new and enhanced optical networking solutions for service providers, offering end-to end carrier Ethernet functionality, increased density for voice services, and enhanced bandwidth flexibility and switching capabilities.

The enhancements to Cisco 15300, 15400 and 15600 series optical networking platforms enable cost-effective provisioning, monitoring and management of new and existing services from the edge to the core. The new and enhanced products feature carrier Ethernet (CE) functionality, support for new services and improved transport flexibility.

Cisco has also announced a new line card for the ONS 15454 multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP) for metro networks that supports link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS), virtual concatenation (VCAT) and generic framing procedure (GFP). This will allow carriers using the ONS 15454 platform to consolidate optimized data services on one platform. Cisco has also introduced high density DS-3 line cards for the platform to deliver more efficient and cost-effective time-division multiplexing services.

At the network edge, Cisco has launched the new ONS 15310-CL Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) multiservice platform and announced enhancements to its ONS 15302 and 15305 Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) multiservice customer access platforms. The ONS 15310-CL supports LCAS, VCAT and GFP in a single rack unit platform. The ONS 15302 and Cisco ONS 15305 platforms now support private-line and switched-Ethernet services. Cisco says that all three platforms are interoperable with existing ONS 15454 platforms.

Cisco has not neglected the network core in its latest optical networking announcements. It has expanded the transport flexibility of the ONS 15600 multiservice switching platform with the introduction of a new ASAP line card that augments the platform's existing OC-48 and OC-192 interfaces with OC-3, OC-12 and GFP-based Gigabit Ethernet. The new single-slot cross-connect card is both faster and less power-hungry than the ONS 15600 MSSP's current card, allowing it to support more than 32 two-fiber bidirectional line-switched rings.