Infineon Jumps on RPR

SAN JOSE, Calif., and MUNICH -- Infineon Technologies (FSE/NYSE: IFX), a leading provider of communications ICs and fiber optics components, today announced that it is developing devices incorporating OC-192 Resilient Packet Ring technology, a technology that is currently being standardized in the IEEE 802.17 committee and that will extend Gigabit Ethernet into Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks, paving the way for Gigabit Ethernet metro services. The new devices will augment Infineon’s recently announced industry leading 40Gbps high-speed framing, mapping, and mux/demux line card solutions. Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) is gaining rapid momentum within the industry and will play a critical role in offering service providers the ability to create high-speed metropolitan networks that transport voice and data traffic efficiently while lowering both capital expense as well as ongoing operational expenses. RPR, a Layer Two media access control (MAC) technology, significantly increases the bandwidth efficiency of service provider networks by utilizing twice the capacity of traditional SONET/SDH rings. RPR delivers dynamic bandwidth management while preserving the same kind of protection and resiliency found in SONET/SDH networks. In an effort to accelerate industry availability of RPR products, Infineon is licensing Cisco’s widely deployed Spatial Reuse Protocol (SRP), a technology now used by over 190 service providers worldwide. SRP is a MAC-layer protocol for ring-based packet internetworking and is open and freely available as IETF Informational RFC 2892. Additionally, SRP has been submitted to the IEEE 802.17 Working Group. Cisco uses SRP in their Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT) products to deliver scalability, reliability, and simplicity to next-generation packet-based metro networks. “Infineon, with its expertise in IC technology, will provide highly-integrated, low-power, small foot print devices for SRP and for emerging 802.17 RPR networks.” said Tony Bates, vice president, Internet Routing Group at Cisco Systems. “Infineon’s contribution to the RPR efforts will help further the rapid deployment of revenue generating Resilient Packet Ring networks by service providers.” Infineon Technologies AG