June 16, 2009

Zhone Announces MXK Terabit-Scale MSAP

Zhone announced today its MXK™ intelligent terabit access concentrator line, a category-defining addition to the company’s family of carrier-class multi-service access platform (MSAP) products. The new MXK platforms feature a 2x bandwidth improvement over the closest competitor — with non-blocking capacity of up to 3,600 100 Mbps GPON subscribers or 360 1G Active Ethernet subscribers per chassis — while leveraging Zhone’s well-proven SLMS™ access operating system for sophisticated service intelligence and ease of management.

Accelerating shifts in subscriber expectations that move ever more traffic from broadcast video to unicast multi-stream HD, video on demand, and immersive games are placing unprecedented demands on access networks. A truly scalable response to these demands requires a clean-sheet approach to access network architecture — an approach Zhone has pioneered with the MXK platforms. With an initial focus on FTTx applications, the MXK line sets new benchmarks for the industry in a number of areas:

* Upgradability to 1 Terabyte switching capacity by uplink replacement alone
 

* Unrivaled efficiency, supporting up to 9,216 GPON ONTs or up to 360 point-to-point Active Ethernet subscribers in each 8 RU chassis
 

* A range of redundant uplink options from 4 Gbps to 56 Gbps, for optimum network design
 

* Deployment flexibility, with 3 RU x 19”, 8 RU x 19”, and 8 RU x 23” chassis models
 

* A rich complement of SLMS software features for advanced networking, quality of experience, voice, and security driven by 8 years of commercial operation and collaboration with 700+ service providers worldwide — including EAPS, layer 3 routing, traffic policing, rate shaping, dynamic bandwidth allocation, and multicast group management
 

* Smart OMCI™, a truly standards-compliant implementation of GPON ONT management that offers proven multi-vendor interoperability and, as part of the Zhone Management System, comprehensive, intuitive management for FTTx networks
 

“Zhone has paired high performance with impressive efficiency gains in the MXK for indeed a new benchmark in high capacity service provisioning,” said Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst of Broadbandtrends.com. “As traffic demands grow exponentially, this level of scalability and the ability to intuitively manage a broad range of services are key to giving network operators the readiness to compete and the headroom to innovate.”
 

”The MXK represents a genuinely new path forward in access network architecture,” said Steven Glapa, vice president of product management and marketing for Zhone. “Pairing raw streaming-media bandwidth with intelligent, nuanced management of traffic gives operators a powerful platform to deliver a new class of media services.”
 

Zhone’s MXK platforms are available now. They are proving their value through early deployments in a number of customer networks all over the world, and market activity around the new line is rising quickly.

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