Network Design

Echostar deploys Marconi equipment and services in video transport network

July 15, 2003

15 July 2003 London/ Pittsburgh PA Lightwave Europe -- Marconi Corp today announced a new contract with EchoStar Communications for EchoStar's video transport network.

- Distributed Protection Switching cuts "single-point-of-failure" for real-time video distribution network

15 July 2003 London/ Pittsburgh PA -- Marconi Corp today announced a new contract with EchoStar Communications Corp. for EchoStar's video transport network.

Marconi says its involvement will improve service availability with its Distributed Protection Switching (DPS), which also lowers the cost of protecting information flows and eliminates the unused fibre required by some solutions for redundancy.

DPS can be implemented with multiple levels of service to protect circuits, network nodes and end-user-owned access equipment (customer premise equipment or CPE).

Jeff McSchooler, EchoStar Vice President of Engineering, said, "The Marconi switch routers will help us gain the availability and protection we expect in a large ATM network operation."

Equipment purchased by EchoStar includes Marconi's ASX-4000 40-Gbit/s switch-router, TNX-1100 10-Gbit/s and TNX-210 2.5-Gbit/s switch-routers and ForeThought system software.

"Distributed Protection Switching is a cost-effective improvement in the reliability of service delivery that eliminates the costs associated with redundant bandwidth and dedicated extra routes or circuits," said Tom Murray, vice president of marketing for Marconi's Broadband Routing and Switching group.

"Using DPS, service providers can increase the return on their investment in network infrastructure by freeing up bandwidth for delivery of more revenue-generating services."