Xelerated, a provider of carrier Ethernet chipsets, recently announced that the telecommunications equipment provider, ADVA Optical Networking, has implemented the company’s X11 network processor unit (NPU) into the ADVA’s FSP 3000 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) system, thereby helping ADVA (News - Alert) to expand its carrier Ethernet services into fiber access and aggregation networks.

 

Xelerated says that its X11 is a high function NPU. In general, a network processing unit is an integrated circuit (IC) that has an array of one or more central processing unit (CPU) housed inside, whose instructions are designed to handle networking-related functions.

 

Xelerated’s X11 NPU incorporates four 10G traffic interfaces that are individually configurable - for maximum flexibility. It also features embedded traffic management functions such as QOS-scheduling and multicast copying, which allows direct connection to enterprise switch fabrics, thereby eliminating the cost for expensive traffic managers in midrange enterprise systems.

 

In addition, automatic MAC address learning and ageing is also supported. All these features makes X11 ideal for carriers that are in need of a flexible, cost-effective system that will transport as well as protect high-speed data, storage, voice and video applications, said Xelerated officials.  

 

ADVA Optical Networking (News - Alert) was in need of unified Ethernet-based solution - for carriers and enterprises. Xelerated’s X11 NPU offers both low cost as well as power efficiency similar to an ASIC along with the advantages of programmability that NPU gives. For this reason - ADVA chose X1 to implement on its FSP 3000 system, in order to reduce cost as well as time-to-market, said officials.  

 

Specifically designed for service providers and large enterprises, the ADVA FSP 3000 includes a family of rack-mountable shelves and hot-swappable modules that can be selected to meet the network and application requirements. It offers maximum bandwidth and service flexibility.

 

Its transparent fiber-in fiber-out interfaces support all protocols between the range of 8Mbit/s and 40Gbit/s, including Ethernet, SONET/SDH, G.709 OTH, ATM, video and all SAN protocols. Its optical layer design supports in-service CWDM to DWDM migration as well as the hybrid implementation of static and dynamic photonic components.

 

With the deployment of X11 on ADVA’s FSP 3000 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) system, ADVA is now capable of providing its customers with higher performance and advanced flexibility to support new, revenue-generating services. This was possible because X11 NPU is based on Xelerated’s wirespeed dataflow architecture, which delivers deterministic performance, low latency packet behavior, regardless of packet size, traffic pattern or number of instructions used per packet.

 

“Our carrier customers are looking for opportunities to extend their Carrier Ethernet and triple play services into access and aggregation networks. The X11 provides us with the ability to do so, easily and cost-effectively without sacrificing performance,” said Dr. Christoph Glingener, chief technology officer of ADVA Optical Networking. “The X11 is also adaptable, so we don’t have to worry about buying new equipment to keep up with today’s ever-changing standards.”