Sunet Deploys Ciena

LINTHICUM, Md. and LONDON -- Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that Swedish University Network (SUNET) has successfully rolled out its new 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network, OptoSUNET, using Ciena’s FlexSelect™ Architecture that includes optical transmission, multiservice transport, Ethernet services and network management solutions. Ciena’s platforms were deployed as part of a turnkey solution by Imtech N.V., a pan-European systems integrator and Ciena Platinum partner.

OptoSUNET replaces SUNET’s existing leased network, providing greater scalability, reliability and high-capacity connectivity between 32 Swedish universities to support growing demand for higher bandwidth applications. A robust and flexible network, OptoSUNET will allow educational institutions to optimize bandwidth usage and share the workload of research projects and simulations that require tremendous processing power and speed. It is also the first optical research and education network in Scandinavia to be based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology.

The new, fibre-based network is fully redundant with two independent optical links connecting Stockholm to each major city, giving universities up to 80 channels with 10 Gbps per channel capacity and scalability to 40 Gbps per channel – for a total of 3.2 Tbps of capacity – as demand grows. It will afford universities the ability to connect via GbE and 10 GbE interfaces utilizing the Ethernet-friendly transport protocol OTN (Optical Transport Network), which is defined by the ITU as G.709 and is rapidly replacing SONET/SDH as the preferred transport protocol.

The Ciena platforms deployed include CoreStream® Agility Optical Transport System, CN 4200™ FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform, CN 4350™ Ethernet Services Provisioning Switch and ON-Center® Network and Services Management Suite.

“Research and education networks require a tremendous amount of capacity to facilitate collaboration on bandwidth-intensive applications, and Ciena’s FlexSelect Architecture gives SUNET a high-performance solution with the scalability and service flexibility required to share critical resources throughout the university network,” said Hans Wallberg, chief of operations for OptoSUNET. “In addition, a key driving force behind this new architecture is to reduce operational costs while moving to a network that is fully redundant and allows us to scale to 40G and beyond as requirements change.”

Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN)