The demand for more bandwidth is driven by IP-based applications. Consequently, service providers are embracing packet-centric infrastructure and displacing technologies like SONET, ATM and Frame Relay in new build-outs due to the high cost and lack of flexibility associated with legacy technologies. Ethernet has become the transport technology of choice in access and metro networks because a worldwide deployment in LANs together with standardization has driven the price down considerably.

Service providers are rapidly expanding their business service offerings, as this is an area that is projected to grow substantially over the coming years. IPITEK's MSP-10GE together with the MSP-1GE allows building protected ring architectures, while extending the network out into protected 1GE pipes or access rings to serve multi-tenant units or small campus environments. Even protected 10GE services directly to the end user are possible. All customer-interfacing ports, whether it is 1GE or 10GE ports, can be provisioned to any speed with the use of rate shaping and policing, while each service can be assigned the needed end-to-end QoS. These features allow transporting a mix of services from best effort data to time-sensitive applications. The inherently low latency and jitter of IPITEK's switched platform further ensure the feasibility of transporting real-time traffic together with other services.

Service providers are also expanding their residential services to minimize churn. Especially Video on Demand is creating the need for more bandwidth with standard channels in the 2-4Mbit/s range and HDTV channels in the 7-15Mbit/s range. For this type of service, a built-in feature as "drop and continue" allows a single stream to be sent to any number of outputs in the network saving bandwidth resources as compared with other solutions that require multiple circuits to accomplish the same. Still, affordable bandwidth scalability is key, which makes the compact MSP-10GE platform an ideal fit for this type of application.

IPITEK's Carrier Class Optical Ethernet product family is an advanced solution for Metro / Access applications that together with extensive monitoring and OAM features, built-in test capabilities, and a wide range of management options, enables service providers to build very cost-effective packet-centric infrastructure to carry a wide variety of services on a converged network.