NETWORKS

MRV COMMUNICATIONS has announced the OptiSwitch 940 (OS940), Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) / 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) multi-port network interface device (NID) for connecting and monitoring enterprise Carrier Ethernet Services and mobile backhaul services. MRV Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of optical communication and IT infrastructure management solutions to service providers and enterprises around the world.

The small form-factor (1RU) OS940 features high-performance, non-blocking switching throughput on all four-10GE ports and 12 tri-mode (10/100/1000) GigE interfaces and provides carriers with significant savings including minimal power consumption.

The OS940 offers service providers a full suite of carrier-grade Ethernet services along with high-availability, enhanced quality of service, security, and operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) support. Together, these features offer synchronous optical networking (SONET)-like guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs) over an IP infrastructure.

The OS940 targets a wide range of aggregation and multi-tenant Carrier Ethernet applications, including business broadband delivery to office parks or buildings such as multiple dwelling units or multiple tenant units, mobile backhaul applications requiring aggregation of data from multiple high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) cell sites, and NID applications supporting both Metro Ethernet and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH)/SONET backbone connections where network failover support is required.

The OS940 incorporates hardware-based test tools that reduce operational and capital network maintenance costs and enables flexible service awareness and rigid SLAs. To help carriers reduce the cost of testing and provisioning these advanced services across a network built with equipment from multiple vendors, the OS940 includes fully implemented IEEE, ITU, IETF standards and Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) specifications.

"The Carrier Ethernet equipment market is growing strongly and will continue for the next few years driven by traditional triple play, business applications, and quickly ramping cell site backhaul deployments," said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst at Infonetics Research. "Over 95% of operators' Ethernet service revenues come from sub rate GigE and 10GE services, and we believe the range of demarcation devices backed up by built-in measurements tools will help to differentiate MRV in this market."

"MRV was one of the first to bring a 10GE demarcation device to market in 2007, and is now backing up that leadership with the OS940 which offers more 10GE options to carriers and nicely augments the rest of the OptiSwitch product line," said Mary Jane Gruninger, optical communications systems president at MRV. "With the OS940, service providers not only have high performance, but also have access to extensive OAM tools that can deliver a dramatic improvement in network maintenance costs."

As part of the OptiSwitch Family, the OS940 is supported by MRV's Pro-Vision(R), an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI) that simplifies end-to-end provisioning, maintenance and management of bonded copper or fiber Carrier Ethernet services.