Cisco Tweaks Its Optical Networking Line
11/17/2004 -- Cisco Systems on Monday fleshed out its multiservice optical networking product line with new and enhanced offerings for the edge, metro and core networks.
Cisco’s edge solutions received the biggest overhaul. For starters, Cisco announced a brand new offering—the ONS 15310-CL Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) Multiservice Platform—but also touted enhancements to its ONS 15302 and Cisco ONS 15305 synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) multiservice customer access platforms, too.
For metro networks, Cisco augmented its ONS 15454 Multiservice provisioning platform (MSPP) with new carrier Ethernet functionality and high-density DS-3 solutions. And for the core, Cisco introduced a new any-service, any-port (ASAP) line card that supports software-selectable bandwidth and protocol options—along with faster broadband switching capabilities—for its ONS 15600 MSSP. The ASAP card is paired with a new ONS 15600 MSSP single-slot cross-connect (SSXC) card that Cisco says is faster and uses less power than that product’s current SSXC card.
Cisco officials say customers can tap the ONS 15310-CL SONET platform to deploy a range of new services (including private-line and switched-Ethernet services) and expose features like link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS), virtual concatenation (VCAT) and generic framing procedure (GFP) without going through the trouble of ripping and replacing their existing infrastructures. The 1U rack-mounted ONS-15310-CL also interoperates with Cisco’s existing ONS 15454 SONET MSPP products.
Cisco positions the ONS 15302 and ONS 15305—which support private-line and switched-Ethernet services—as solutions for SDH networks. Like the new 15310-SL, they’re also interoperable with Cisco’s ONS 15454 SDH MSPP infrastructure. These and other Cisco optical networking products can be managed using Cisco’s Transport Manager.
The enhancements Cisco has made to the ONS 15454 MSPP introduce support for LCAS, VCAT and GFP, and for new high-density DS-3 line cards. At the core, the ASAP card expands the ONS 15600 MSSP’s support for the OC-48 and OC-192 interfaces to include OC-3, OC-12 and GFP-based Gigabit Ethernet, as well.  -Stephen Swoyer
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