Fujitsu Network Communications announced a series of significant service, functionality, and density enhancements to its flagship FLASHWAVE 4500 Multiservice Switching Platform (MSSP). Fujitsu holds the leading share position in the North American SONET/SDH market. The FLASHWAVE 4500 platform combines the benefits of an ultra high-capacity core network hub with advanced multiservice capabilities that allow Ethernet and broadband video services to be provisioned across existing SONET metropolitan transport networks.
Enhancements to the FLASHWAVE 4500 include:
- The addition of IEEE 802.17 Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) support. With this release, SONET, Ethernet over SONET (EoS), RPR, Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT), and high/low order grooming and switching capabilities have been combined on a single, high-capacity platform. This mix of service delivery technologies allows carriers to offer a wide variety of traditional DS1, DS3 and OC-n private line services, plus carrier-class 10 Mbps to Gigabit Ethernet Private Line (EPL) services, from a single network.
- The addition of a new 12-port DS3 Transmux interface card. This enables carriers to leverage the VT1.5 switch fabric of the FLASHWAVE 4500 platform to maximize the efficiency of TDM circuits. Each DS3 Transmux card can gather hundreds of low capacity VT1.5 circuits from DS1 interface cards or poorly utilized DS3 or OC-n connections, and multiplex them into fully utilized, high capacity STS-1 payloads. By transmitting a lesser quantity of fully utilized STS-1 payloads instead of many partially utilized payloads, carriers can reduce their Interoffice Facility (IOF) transport costs. Consolidating circuits in this manner before they enter a Digital Cross-connect System (DCS) also maximizes its switching efficiency and helps carriers postpone or eliminate the costly capital expense of adding or expanding a DCS.
- New four-port 10/100Base-T and two-port Gigabit Ethernet RPR over SONET interface cards. These perform a similar function as the DS3 Transmux cards, but they operate at Layer 2 on Ethernet circuits. RPR cards create customized partitions between TDM and packet bandwidth. Within the packet partition, the RPR cards support multiple classes of service and perform statistical multiplexing of Ethernet packets to maximize the utilization of path bandwidth for bursty data applications and allow more Ethernet services to be provisioned on a ring than with SONET alone. Ethernet/RPR Performance Monitoring (PM) and alarm management are integrated into the embedded management plane, allowing carriers to manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs) without an additional management infrastructure. Sub-50 millisecond ring protection is maintained using BLSR/UPSR for SONET and node re-route, steering, and protection for RPR per the IEEE 802.17 specification.
- New dual port OC-48 units -- these double the OC-48 density of the platform from an existing 60 ports to 120 ports in a multishelf FLASHWAVE 4500 system. Now, up to 15 OC-192 interoffice rings, 60 OC-48 interoffice/access rings, and hundreds of OC-12/OC-3 access rings can co-exist in the same FLASHWAVE 4500 shelf with DS1, DS3/EC1, 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet and DVB-ASI circuits.
In addition, expansion shelves with 100 Gbps of interface capacity per shelf can be added to a standard FLASHWAVE 4500 MSPP to support core grooming applications that traditionally require a high-cost DCS. By supporting a simple MSPP-to-MSSP migration as demand for increased bandwidth dictates, the FLASHWAVE 4500 platform simplifies sparing and planning, and minimizes the impact on existing operating systems, procedures and staff. http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom
