CIENA Takes DWDM to Short-Haul Market
Announces MultiWave Firefly(TM) and MultiWave Metro(TM)
LINTHICUM, Md., Sept. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- CIENA Corporation (Nasdaq:CIEN) entered a new segment of the dense wavelength division
multiplexing (DWDM) market today with the announcement of MultiWave Firefly(TM), a new product designed for point-to-point short-haul
applications in the public network, and MultiWave Metro(TM), a product now in development for ring-based metropolitan network applications.
MultiWave Firefly is a DWDM transport system which will enable local exchange carriers (LECs) to cost effectively expand the bandwidth of
existing fiberoptic cable by up to 24 times its current capacity providing much-needed relief on fiber constrained networks.
CIENA's new MultiWave Firefly will be demonstrated in the CIENA booth (#421) at the National Fiber Optics Engineers Conference (NFOEC '97)
in San Diego, September 22 to 24. Firefly will be commercially available by the end of this year. The Company's launch of the product
development effort for MultiWave Metro is expected to result in commercial availability during the second half of 1998.
"We believe DWDM products designed for short-haul applications will effectively change the economics of delivering bandwidth," said Patrick Nettles, CIENA's president and chief executive officer. "MultiWave Firefly will alleviate bandwidth constraint for interoffice applications, bringing the scalability and cost efficiencies of DWDM to an entirely new base of customers," he added.
"MultiWave Firefly represents an entirely new class of DWDM product, which we believe is optimized from both a performance and cost
perspective to meet the bandwidth demands faced by local service providers," said Jesus Leon, CIENA's vice president of access products. "We expect MultiWave Metro will give service providers the flexibility to add bandwidth where and when it is needed, especially for flexible provisioning of high-capacity services in the local loop."
Background
The rapid growth of the Internet and other data applications has fueled increased traffic and demand for bandwidth in the local loop, creating the need for high bandwidth connectivity between enterprise facilities and public networks. CIENA was faced with the challenge of designing systems that would be economical for these types of applications.
"Local exchange carriers increasingly are faced with problems associated with fiber exhaust. Until now, DWDM has not been an option because the price points of products designed for long-distance applications have been prohibitive when applied on shorter links," said Dr. John Ryan, a principal at Ryan, Hankin & Kent, and co-author of a recent report on DWDM markets. "Our analysis now shows that DWDM can be
economical at lower speeds and over shorter distances. CIENA has taken some important steps toward delivering DWDM functionality for
short-distance applications."
MultiWave Firefly
MultiWave Firefly was developed specifically to operate point-to-point without amplifiers in routes of up to 65 kilometers. The system
multiplexes up to 24 discrete optical channels operating at 2.5 Gbps (billion bits per second) over one fiber pair, allowing network operators to provision on a channel-by-channel basis, up to a maximum of 60 Gbps of traffic on a fiber link.
Like MultiWave Sentry introduced by CIENA earlier this year, Firefly is capable of interfacing either with traditional SONET/SDH equipment or directly with devices carrying ATM or fast IP traffic. This interoperability eliminates the need for SONET multiplexers as interface devices between ATM or IP networks and the transport equipment, thereby simplifying the network and reducing cost.
MultiWave Firefly provides flexible, standards-based, network management to support TL1, Telecommunications Management Network (TMN)
and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) as well as being compatible with CIENA's WaveWatcher(R) network management software.
MultiWave Metro
MultiWave Metro, currently under development, is a ring-based metropolitan network system using DWDM technology with as many as 16
different wavelengths. Metro is intended to provide a cost-effective, modularly expandable network to deliver high bandwidth to end customers.
CIENA's MultiWave Metro system will target interoffice rings and high bandwidth local loop services. Metro is designed to provide high
aggregate bandwidth capacity for multiple applications and data rates. The product is expected to simultaneously aggregate multiple traffic
types, including SONET/SDH (at both the SONET levels of OC-12 and OC-48 and the SDH rates of STM-4 and STM-16), ATM and fast IP in a
ring environment, providing network survivability and the ability to add or drop traffic at various locations around the ring.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: Forward-looking statements in this news release, including statements regarding the status of and beliefs, expectations
and intentions regarding MultiWave Firefly and MultiWave Metro, are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof.
The company's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements, due to risks and
uncertainties associated with new product development in the DWDM field, the Company's dependence on its major customers and their
spending patterns, the recent introduction of its products, and the overall management of the Company's expansion. The forward- looking
statements should be considered in the context of these and other risk factors disclosed in the Company's report on Form 8-K, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 19, 1997, and as further amended and restated by Amendment No. 1 to the Form 8-K, as
filed with the SEC on August 6, 1997, and as supplemented by the discussion of risk considerations in the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q as filed with the SEC on August 20, 1997.
ABOUT CIENA: CIENA Corporation is a worldwide market leader of open architecture, dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) systems for long-distance and local exchange carriers. CIENA's DWDM solutions include the MultiWave(TM) 1600 long-haul transport system, WaveWatcher(R) network management software, the MultiWave Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer, the MultiWave Sentry enhanced long-distance
transport system and the new MultiWave Firefly and MultiWave Metro short-haul systems.
An optical fiber without DWDM technology carries a single color of laser light, or a single wavelength, on which travels approximately 32,000 voice or data transmissions. DWDM technology divides the single color into multiple colors or channels, thereby multiplying the capacity ofthe fiber by the number of channels. This enables service providers to expand bandwidth without the expensive process of adding more fibers. With CIENA's new MultiWave Firefly, existing capacity of a fiber will increase by 24 times, which equates to 768,000 voice or data transmissions.
SOURCE: CIENA Corporation |
