Marconi launches the first product from its Laurel Networks partnership, the BXR-5000 edge router

28 May 2003 Pittsburgh, PA Lightwave--Marconi today announced the availability of the BXR-5000 edge router as part of a partnership between its Broadband Routing and Switching group and privately held, service edge router company Laurel Networks. Marconi's Broadband Routing and Switching group and Laurel Networks are both based in Pittsburgh, where they are combining their networking expertise to solve communications problems for the U.S. Federal government and other network operators.

The BXR-5000 is a scalable 160 Gbits/sec per rack platform (80 Gbits/sec in and 80 Gbits/sec out) that supports the aggregation of high-density Gigabit Ethernet into a high-speed multiservice core over OC-48c/STM-16 (2.5-Gbit/sec) or OC-192c/STM-64 (10-Gbit/sec) circuits. Complementing Marconi's BXR-48000, a 960 Gbits/sec (480 Gbits/sec in and 480 Gbits/sec out) switch-router, the BXR-5000 supports high density, high-speed aggregation using packet over SONET/SDH or ATM transport protocols. It delivers high-bandwidth, next-generation performance with commercially available, standards-based quality of service and encryption support required by network operators.

"Through this partnership, Marconi combines its strong relationships in the federal market and best-in-class multiservice switching technology with Laurel's world-class IP routing," said Mark Bieberich, senior analyst, Communications Network Infrastructure, Yankee Group. "As the operators of government networks expand their switched and routed networks, this provides a compelling solution for delivering new IP and MPLS [multi-protocol label switching] services while also maintaining support for legacy services."

The agreement with Laurel Networks, which includes sales, marketing and development activities, provides a complementary solution to Marconi's BXR, ASX and TNX products. In addition to providing aggregation of high-density Gigabit Ethernet and Internet Protocol (IP) services, the BXR-5000 addresses the requirements of U.S. Federal government markets for IP quality of service along with the benefits of plug-and-play provisioning of network elements with self-configuration, self-healing and simple management of large, flat networks. This Laurel Networks agreement complements the recently announced partnership with Riverstone Networks, which enables Marconi to combine its softswitch with a Gigabit Ethernet router to provide a competitive voice-over-IP (VoIP) networking solution.

The partnership also provides the robust network characteristics such as scalability, predictability, reliability, security and flexibility required for real-time applications that include transport of multimedia, high-performance computing and high-resolution imagery.