New gear promises to extend Gig Ethernet WANs

CHELMSFORD, MASS. - Sycamore Networks says its equipment will soon be able to let service providers quickly set up Gigabit Ethernet links across optical networks, giving customers inexpensive, high-speed connections without months of provisioning time.

The company is rolling out two cards for its optical switches that support Gigabit Ethernet ports that can be throttled back to as slow as 5M bit/sec and increased to 1G bit/sec in increments as small as 1M bit/sec. The cards take advantage of technologies Sycamore calls EtherOptics that let carriers map Gigabit Ethernet streams across long-haul fiber networks.

These cards will enable services such as connecting corporate sites at LAN speeds to distant data centers. Today, Gigabit Ethernet service providers, such as Yipes Communications, offer Gigabit Ethernet connectivity only between sites in a metropolitan region, says Scott Clavenna, an analyst with Point East Consulting.

"This is end-to-end [over long-distance], not just Gigabit Ethernet in a metro area. This will become a [service] option for a lot of carriers," he says.

The new cards plug into Sycamore's SN 10000 long-haul switches that sit in the carrier core, and its SN 3000 access switches that feed customer sites. The card for the SN 3000 access switch features rate adaptation, which enables carriers to deliver bandwidth in small increments, according to Rick Berry, Sycamore's chief technical officer.

French service provider LDCOM Networks plans to use the gear to offer Ethernet services to customers who prefer Ethernet links to their switches over more expensive SONET ports.

Swedish carrier Utfors uses Sycamore equipment to support a Gigabit Ethernet backbone for its voice and data network, says Sten Nordell, Utfors' chief technology officer. Nordell says Utfors chose a Gigabit Ethernet backbone because customers are generally familiar with Ethernet technology, it is easy to provision, and the equipment costs one-third less, making services less expensive.

None of Sycamore's U.S. customers has announced plans to use the new cards in existing gear.

To provision a Gigabit Ethernet circuit between two sites in a Sycamore-based network, an administrator locates the sites on a network map displayed on a Sycamore net management workstation.

The manager clicks on the two sites and the switches are provisioned to handle the new circuit. That is much faster than provisioning each switch along the way using keyboard commands, Sycamore says.

The new Gigabit Ethernet cards come in an eight-port version for the SN 10000, which costs $65,000 for short-haul connections, and in a two-port version for the SN 3000, which costs $14,000. The cards come in long-haul versions, but prices are not set.

Sycamore: www.sycamore.com