May 18 , 2005 Mountain View, CA -- Hammerhead Systems has introduced a suite of Ethernet features for its HSX 6000 Layer 2.5 Aggregation Platform. The company says the features are designed to allow service providers to address key network requirements for IPTV and business-class Ethernet service offerings.

According to the company, the Ethernet feature suite includes:

* A 10-port Gigabit Ethernet module that aggregates key elements of IPTV networks such as Ethernet¿based IP-DSLAMs. The company says that, with the module, the platform allows service providers to provide Ethernet switching and aggregation with a total density of 960 Gigabit Ethernet ports within a telco rack.

* Granular QoS to provide efficient grooming of individual customer data flows and mapping to Layer 3 service attributes, scalable to over a million flows per system, according to the company.

* Support for the IEEE 802.3ad (Link Aggregation) standard, as well as for IEEE 802.1Q (VLAN Tagging) and Q-in-Q (VLAN Stacking), in order to facilitate scalable Ethernet aggregation, seamless bandwidth expansion, and link protection.

* Support for Ethernet-over-SONET/SDH and Ethernet-over-DS3 with GFP, VCAT, and X.86 capabilities. The company says its HSX 6000 is one of the only platforms to support GFP to X.86 interoperation, as well as interoperation with legacy Frame Relay and ATM services.

* Pending support for dynamic Pseudowires to enable controlled migration of customer traffic from legacy networks to MPLS.

The company says the platform has completed Ethernet-over-SONET interoperability testing with key SONET and MSPP infrastructure suppliers, including the company's strategic partner Fujitsu Network Communications, with application-level integration and testing efforts underway. According to the company, the platform is also in lab trials for Pseudowire, Ethernet, and layer 2.5 aggregation applications. The company says the Ethernet capabilities in the feature suite are central elements to ongoing evaluations of the platform.

The company says its HSX 6000 platform provides density for Gigabit Ethernet aggregation, service interoperation of Ethernet with legacy data services, and granular QoS to ensure service guarantees for real-time and non-real-time services ownership. The company says the platform is among the only central office-based data platforms to support Generic Framing Protocol (GFP), enabling service providers with large SONET/SDH networks to efficiently extend those networks to offer services such as GPON and IPTV, while using existing infrastructure.