Ethernet In It for the Long Haul

Neos Corp. today announced plans to launch what it says will be the first commercial deployment of native Ethernet over a long-haul optical network.

The London-based network services company said it will use Nortel Networks Optera Long Haul 1600 Optical Line System to provide up to eight Gigabit Ethernet services per wavelength in a DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) environment.

With the upgrade to the Neosnet network, due to be completed by the end of next month along with Neos Liquid Bandwidth software-based Ethernet provisioning Web site, the network services provider will be able to provision Ethernet bandwidth upgrades in increments of up to 1 Gbps in as little as 48 hours, Neos claimed.

Because the long-haul network traffic will be delivered as Ethernet packets, it will enable enterprises to provide more flexible and possibly cheaper services, officials said. For example, since Ethernet is nearly ubiquitous in enterprise networks, companies tapping into a network such as the one coming from Neos will need fewer router connections, officials said.

“In upgrading Neosnet, our [Multiprotocol Label Switching] enabled U.K. national Ethernet network, we have yet again dramatically extended the service price/performance metrics in favor of our customers, without incurring the unnecessary capital expense of legacy technologies such as [Switched Multimegabit Data Service], frame relay and ATM,” said Neos CEO John Wheeler, in a release.

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