JANET Delivers Europe's First 40 Gbps Wavelength Service Across National Research and Education Network with Ciena

Business Wire, July 9, 2007

Ciena's New 40 Gbps Interface Carries Live Traffic on Busy London Route as First Step in Migrating JANET Network to 40 Gbps

LINTHICUM, Md. & LONDON -- Ciena([R]) Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that JANET(UK) has successfully delivered its first 40 Gbps service in a production environment across JANET, the UK's national research and education network, using the new 40 Gbps capabilities of Ciena's CoreStream([R]) Agility Optical Transport System. This is the first time that a national research and education network (NREN) in Europe has deployed a true 40 Gbps signal across a single optical wavelength to carry live production traffic between sites.

The Ciena-enabled 40 Gbps service was delivered across a dedicated optical fiber link connecting the Canary Wharf and Kings Cross points of presence (PoP) in London, one of the busiest parts of the JANET network.

Funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), JANET provides a highly robust and scalable UK-wide optical network to support the diverse requirements of a user base of 18 million, including research institutes, universities, further education and primary and secondary schools. Ciena's CoreStream Agility platform forms the foundation of the JANET backbone transmission infrastructure to deliver high-speed connectivity for end-users. Additionally, Ciena's FlexSelect([TM]) CN 4200[TM] Advanced Services Platform connects 19 UK regional networks to the JANET backbone. Both Ciena solutions offer a seamless upgrade to 40 Gbps of capacity per wavelength as needed.

With the first 40 Gbps connectivity now in service between two PoPs, JANET plans to migrate its entire CoreStream Agility-based transport infrastructure to 40 Gbps interfaces during the course of 2008, dependent on network traffic growth. As Ciena's solution enables new 40 Gbps wavelengths to be intermixed with existing 10 Gbps wavelengths on the same fiber system, JANET will be able to migrate seamlessly to 40 Gbps, without interruption to the existing 10 Gbps network or the need to build a separate, standalone network.

Jeremy Sharp, JANET Head of Strategic Technologies, said: "With the support of our technology partners such as Ciena, we are very confident that the migration to 40 Gbps will be successful. By increasing single wavelength capacity, we are able to scale the JANET network whilst continuing to offer a very high quality service to the education and research community."

Ciena began 40 Gbps research and development in 2000, and has since participated in multiple live industry demonstrations and field tests. In anticipation of customer demand, all of Ciena's optical transport systems, including CoreStream Agility and the CN 4200, were made 40G-ready by 2005. As part of that strategy, Ciena's FlexSelect 40G Shelf extends serial 40 Gbps optical transport capabilities for Ciena's CoreStream Agility and CN 4200 platforms as an in-service upgrade to help JANET and other customers scale bandwidth capacity to keep pace with increasing network traffic. The FlexSelect 40G Shelf features eight hot-swappable and wavelength-provisionable line cards that support 40 Gbps clients, aggregate 4x10 Gbps clients, and generate a 40 Gbps signal or regenerate 40 Gbps signals for SONET, SDH or OTN protocols up to 43 Gbps.

John-Paul Hemingway, chief technologist for Ciena in EMEA, said that JANET's 40 Gbps deployment is a significant milestone for both Ciena and Europe's research and education community. Hemingway noted: "With growing demands on today's research and education networks, it is essential that organizations such as JANET(UK) deliver a high-performance backbone that is easily scalable to 40 Gbps per channel to cost-efficiently increase bandwidth. We are proud to help JANET take the lead in this area with our new 40 Gbps solution, which provides more capacity while managing fewer wavelengths."

Ciena's technology forms the foundation of many leading research networks worldwide, including JANET, SUNET and RENATER in Europe as well as Internet2 and the U.S. Department of Energy's UltraScience Net in the United States. The Company's FlexSelect Architecture enables on-demand provisioning of optical and Ethernet services including GbE and 10 GbE Ethernet lightpaths between institutions, leveraging highly-flexible software-programmable interfaces, intelligent control plane technologies and an advanced management toolset.

About JANET(UK)

JANET(UK) manages the operation and development of JANET on behalf of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) for the UK Further and Higher Education Funding Councils. JISC also works in partnership with the Research Councils. JANET(UK) is government funded, with the primary aim of providing and developing a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the education and research communities.

About JANET

JANET is the network dedicated to the needs of education and research in the UK. It connects the UK's education and research organisations to each other, as well as to the rest of the world through links to the global Internet. In addition, JANET includes a separate network that is available to the community for experimental activities in network development. The JANET network connects UK universities, FE Colleges, Research Councils, Specialist Colleges and Adult and Community Learning providers. It also provides connections between the Regional Broadband Consortia to facilitate the DfES initiative for a national schools' network. Over 18 million end-users are currently served by the JANET network.