Ciena Integrating 40G Coherent Technology on CN 4200 RS FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform

Company accelerates strategy of integrating key acquired technology across portfolio to address opportunities with existing customers and key applications

Linthicum, MD — 05/10/2010

Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings), the network specialist, today announced the integration of the company’s market-leading 40G coherent technology on its CN 4200® RS FlexSelect® Advanced Services Platform to address customer demand for higher capacity metro and regional networks, managed services and enterprise applications. The move underscores the company’s commitment to accelerating the integration and delivery of advanced technology from the recently acquired Nortel* Metro Ethernet Networks assets across its product portfolio and to its installed base.

Ciena’s global footprint of CN 4200 customers includes numerous network operators for metro and regional infrastructures, managed service providers as well as government and enterprise users.  In response to their need for increased network capacity due to unprecedented traffic growth, service requirements and potential fiber exhaustion, the company is integrating its native 40G coherent and Adaptive Optical Engine technology into a new module for the CN 4200 RS chassis.  Customers can leverage the solution’s advanced signal processing technologies, which use Dual Polarization Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (DP QPSK) modulation, coherent detection and electronic dispersion compensation to transmit four times as much information across existing 10G networks. These advanced optical technologies, which Ciena is the first and only to commercialize to date, allow 40 Gbps transmission even over impaired fiber that cannot be used for 10Gbps without the need for separate optical Chromatic Dispersion (CD) and Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) compensators.  With an in-service upgrade, existing CN 4200 customers can obtain a four-fold increase in capacity with existing ROADM schemes, enhancing equipment scalability and avoiding network re-design.

“After closing the acquisition of Nortel’s MEN assets in March, Ciena acted quickly to define its organizational structure and product portfolio, rallying around ground-breaking coherent 40G and 100G technology,” said Ron Kline, Principal Analyst Network Infrastructure at Ovum. “Now, after a little more than a month, the company has begun making solid progress on successfully integrating that coherent technology into the CN 4200 and CoreStream platforms, which significantly widens Ciena’s addressable market to include the sizeable embedded base of its network elements.”

Ciena is also integrating the 40G coherent capabilities into the network management software for CN 4200 RS so customers can manage the 40G wavelengths from within their existing management environment, eliminating the need to deploy and operationalize a separate management system.  This integrated service layer management provides end-to-end service-level monitoring, troubleshooting and fault management capabilities for the new 40G circuits.

“Following the optical interoperability and network management integration between Ciena’s CN 4200 and Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 demonstrated at OFC/NFOEC in March, today’s announcement marks another milestone in the integration of key technologies across our portfolio,” said Philippe Morin, senior vice president, global products group at Ciena. “Beyond accelerating our product roadmaps and delivering additional value to our installed base of products, these swift portfolio integrations enable us to best leverage our most compelling innovations and offer our customers the most strategic tools for facilitating the transition to next-generation networks.”

In response to similar capacity demands from the company’s CoreStream® Agility Optical Transport System customers, Ciena is integrating its 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine technology into a new FlexSelect Optical Shelf for the platform as a value-added solution for the installed base.  This new feature provides existing CoreStream customers – which include numerous Tier 1 global network operators – with the option to offer fully-managed, end-to-end 40G/100G wavelengths on their network across 10G-engineered links, allowing seamless and cost-efficient capacity upgrades in support of surging traffic demands on core networks while maintaining signal reach and performance.

The 40G coherent upgrade offering on CN 4200 and related network management functionality enhancements are expected in the second half of calendar 2010. The optical integration of 40G coherent capabilities on CoreStream is already complete, and the full solution entered into lab and field trials this month.

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