Cisco beefs up IP and optical range

Cisco is adding a new range of merged IP and optical switches and routers to its portfolio, and has claimed that resellers will benefit from the resulting demand for internet traffic management products.

The network giant's new ONS 15200 series of routers enables data to be carried on established optical transport services.

Cisco has identified a demand for the new multi-service delivery platforms with more than 500 service providers in the US already using its predecessor, ONS 15454. It has also launched an optical specialisation programme for reseller partners that wish to sell the new range.

The use of the channel to deliver to service providers is a significant move, according to Keith Humphreys, a consultant at analyst EuroLan.

"At its Partner Summit in Las Vegas earlier this month, Cisco was embracing the channel for all service provider sales, believing it can leverage its strengths. This is a novel approach to a market which has traditionally been served directly, so it is good news for partners," he said.

Resellers can now offer service providers a technology capable of delivering data bandwidth through existing optical transportation networks that were originally designed to carry voice only.

Johann Strauss, marketing programmes manager at Cisco's optical network group, said the increased use of high bandwidth value-add services via the internet has left traditional optical transportation networks unable to meet demand.

"The optical networks were not built for data transmissions and this needs to be adjusted because we need to build networks that can carry data packets of unpredictable sizes," he said.

Strauss added that resellers will be needed to sell and support the products and could fulfil the increased demand for products using bandwidth-hungry services such as caching and media streaming.

Also published in Computer Reseller News