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Meriton Networks Announces Industry's First Fully Managed High-Speed Metro Services Architecture

Posted on: Monday, 8 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

OTTAWA, Canada, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Meriton Networks Inc. (http://www.meriton.com/), today announced the availability of the industry's first fully managed, access- to-regional, high-speed metro (HSM) services architecture. The architecture provides carriers with a very cost-effective and responsive way to deliver HSM services such as Optical Ethernet, SONET/SDH, Storage Area Networking protocols, and more. Service providers using Meriton's HSM architecture, can now offer truly networked high-speed services without the expense, operational complexity and long provisioning times of dedicated builds. Delivering HSM services more affordably enables Meriton's customers to expand into new markets, increasing the size of the addressable market.

Meriton's HSM architecture is made possible with the addition of a new transparent optical multiplexing device for the access, the Meriton 3300 OSU (Optical Services Unit). The HSM architecture includes the 3300 OSU to collect and aggregate traffic at the customer premise or the carrier's point of presence, and employs wavelengths for cost-effective transport and switching in the metro core by the Meriton 7200 OADX (Optical Add/Drop Switch). The elegance of this architecture is that a single infrastructure is used to enable fiber relief and also deliver HSM services. With optical amplifiers and dispersion compensation modules, the Meriton solution reaches beyond the traditional limits of metro networks with excellent regional distance support. All Meriton elements are fully managed by the centralized 8600 NMS (Network Management System).

"We have concluded in numerous business case studies that the cost of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) is lower than SONET/SDH multiplexing, and WDM price/performance is dropping at a faster rate," said Michael Kennedy, president of consulting firm, Network Strategy Partners. "To date, the market for high-speed services has been held back as carriers have been forced to treat each service order as a dedicated, custom-built project. With Meriton's HSM architecture, carriers have a way to tap into the better price/performance of wavelengths, and leverage the economic advantages inherent in shared capacity."

In its recent report, "Worldwide Metro WDM Forecast and Analysis, 2003- 2007," industry analyst firm IDC notes that carriers are increasingly deploying metro WDM equipment as infrastructure for new Gigabit Ethernet and storage service offerings to end customers. IDC notes that while fiber relief will continue to be an important application for WDM deployments, the real growth drivers are success-based builds that favor applications like Gigabit Ethernet and SAN extension that are closer to the customer and closer to revenue.

"There's no question that the demand for bandwidth is very elastic. By reducing costs by 70% over other architectures, Meriton's approach can expand the addressable market for HSM services from the Fortune 50 to the Fortune 5000," said Mike Gassewitz, president of Meriton Networks. "Our carrier customers are excited that HSM services can now make the transition to be a mainstream offering, just as T1s did many years ago."

To date, the bulk of HSM service deployments are performed on a dedicated basis: carriers dedicating equipment and fiber on a customer-by-customer basis; an expensive and timely proposition for both the carrier and subscriber. Meriton's HSM architecture achieves tremendous economies of scale by enabling shared WDM networks that avoid the operational and economic pains associated with dedicated WDM structures.

The advantages of Meriton's managed high-speed metro services architecture include

- Twice the capacity at 60% less capital cost compared to SONET/SDH

architectures

- "Transparent But Not Blind" performance monitoring

- Evolves metro WDM from transport structures to service delivery

networks

- Out-of-the-box WDMO simplified engineering

The 3300 OSU offers key capabilities that are unique in the industry such

as

- Sub-rate multiplexing cards to maximize wavelength utilization with

interface ports from T1/E1 up to Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel

rates

- Support for both CWDM and DWDM

- Very low start-up cost due to effective use of advanced pluggable

technology

The 3300 OSU is available now for trials and will be generally available in Q4 of 2003. Meriton Networks is demonstrating its managed high-speed metro services architecture and the 3300 OSU at the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference, September 7-11 in Orlando, Florida, Booth 845.

About Meriton Networks Inc.

Meriton Networks Inc. is an innovative wavelength networking company that has developed the industry's first managed high-speed metro (HSM) services architecture. Meriton customers deploy a single, cost-effective solution that addresses the issues of fiber relief and network cost reduction, while also enabling the delivery of all HSM services. The Meriton solution includes metro access, metro core and regional extension products, which are fully managed by a best-in-class suite of network and service management tools. For more information, please visit http://www.meriton.com/.

Meriton Networks, the Meriton Networks logo, MeritonCare, OI2 -Optical Inter-networking Intelligence, IVFN and Out-of-the-box WDM are trademarks of Meriton Networks Inc. Other trademarks that may be used in this document are property of their respective owners.

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