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Programmable Network elements

Programmable network elements represent the ultimate in flexibility. With the evolution of

Digital Signal Processors, network processors and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), technology has continued to move forward with varying degrees of flexibility. While DSPs have proven themselves in consumer devices such as cell phones, FPGAs and Network Processors historically have proven expensive for network equipment. They lacked the performance to compete with hard coded Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). ASICs offer a low price point with high performance, but require long lead times to develop and are NOT reprogrammable, even to fix a software bug. New-generation FPGAs, however, offer speed, performance and reprogrammability at low price points and low power consumption.

New-generation optical devices are now able to take advantage of such technology so that networks can support any optical protocol including Gigabit Ethernet, Sonet/SDH, Fibre Channel, Digital Video and more at speeds up to 10Gbps. This not only means that network line cards can be reused, regardless of when and how the customer plans to migrate, but that SONET/SDH line cards can be reprogrammed to support Ethernet, and Ethernet line cards can be reprogrammed to Digital Video.

Most importantly, this technology not only protects existing investments of network operators, but is offered at dramatically lower price points, reducing both capital expenditures and operational expenditures. New-generation metro, regional and long-haul DWDM networks will benefit significantly from this technology, since native IP over Ethernet over DWDM has proven popular for most network operators. Operators can now migrate   their   networks   as  well  as   their