Bay Microsystems adds PBT support to Chesapeake 40G network processor

OCTOBER 1, 2007 -- Bay Microsystems Inc. (search for Bay Microsystems) today announced the availability of a Provider Backbone Transport (search for PBT) application for its Chesapeake 40G Network Processor. The PBT application is the latest addition to Lighthouse, Bay's hardware and software tool suite that facilitates the design, development, debug, and delivery of next generation network equipment. 

With Ethernet's emergence as the end-to-end protocol of choice throughout service provider networks, PBT, also known as IEEE 802.1Qay and PBB-TE, has become a much discussed topic in the networking world. PBT provides simple and desirable enhancements to existing Carrier Ethernet technologies transforming Ethernet into a connection-oriented transport technology with fine-grained traffic engineering capability, says the company. Ethernet with PBT provides a scalable, secure, cost-effective, elegant and reliable option for transport and service requirements within today's bandwidth-hungry networks.

"The explosive growth seen in the CESR [Carrier Ethernet Switches and Routers] market is largely attributed to the global adoption and deployment of advanced Carrier Ethernet services," reports Santhosh Vasanthakumar, product marketing manager at Bay Microsystems. "Bay is well positioned to capitalize on the CESR market with Chesapeake, which leads the industry in providing the flexibility and performance required for the broad range of existing and emerging Carrier Ethernet applications," he notes.

According to Bay Microsystems, Chesapeake's programmable packet processing engines, extensive service management support, and unparalleled forwarding performance, are ideally suited for the onerous processing requirements of PBT and other Ethernet applications. With the addition of PBT, the Lighthouse Tool Suite now supports a range of Layer 2 and Layer 3 applications, including MPLS, PWE3, IPv4, IPv6, VLAN switching, multicast, and traffic engineering.

The combination of NEXTware APIs, development tools, and applications
offered with Lighthouse significantly reduces development cost and
time for network OEMs, say company representatives. The tool suite fully equips customers to realize the potential of Chesapeake and deploy high-performance end systems based on Chesapeake in record time, they claim. Lighthouse Tool Suite has been shipping to customers since March 2007.

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