Comcast, Cisco and Nortel Plan to Collaborate to Improve Multivendor Interoperability

Comcast, Cisco and Nortel Plan to Collaborate to Improve Multivendor Interoperability

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA; CMCSK), the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, today announced its intention to form an Open Transport Initiative (OTI). The OTI's primary objective is to improve the interoperability between Optical and IP network layers and compatibility among multiple vendors' equipment within Comcast's network.

Comcast plans to work with Nortel and Cisco as the first vendors in this initiative.

The initial phase of the Open Transport Initiative will focus on providing operators, such as Comcast, greater network and bandwidth agility. The OTI plans to first identify and define a set of common interfaces, which will be used to integrate and manage Nortel DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) and Cisco IP equipment. Such open interfaces will help improve the vendors' ability to interoperate seamlessly within the same transport infrastructure, making it simpler to combine Optical and IP technologies on the same network.

"This collaboration is a natural and much-needed step in the evolution of network technology and the interoperability of multi-vendor networks," said Dave Fellows, Comcast's Chief Technology Officer. "Comcast is proud to work with Cisco and Nortel, because of their technology vision and their expertise in integrating large, diverse networks."

"Together with Cisco and Comcast, we plan to support the broader adoption of the common interfaces that result from this initiative," said Philippe Morin, General Manager, Optical Networks, Nortel. "This effort will enable the removal of operational barriers that currently exist between IP and optical networks and establish an intelligent, high bandwidth 'service on demand' network capable of delivering any service, over any path -- optical or copper -- with complete operational simplicity."

"Cisco has a long tradition of supporting industry standards and promoting industry-wide interoperability in order to accelerate innovation and customer adoption," said Tony Bates, senior vice president and general manager of the Carrier Core Multiservice business unit at Cisco. "Our enhancements to the Cisco CRS-1 product family -- including 10G DWDM interfaces, 40Gbps packet interconnect over 10G DWDM transport and control plane enhancements make this vision a reality. We believe there are significant CAPEX and OPEX benefits to be gained by tight integration of IP and photonic technologies in the network and are happy to work with Comcast and Nortel toward these goals."

Under this agreement, the parties will explore a number of objectives, including:

* Next-generation photonic line interfaces that define power levels,
wavelengths, modulation schemes, Optical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and
wavelength identification.

* Align with standards compliant encapsulation mechanisms for forward
error correction (FEC) and operations, administration, maintenance and
provisioning (OAM&P) to allow alien International Telecommunication
Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) wavelengths to be
transported across the transmission layer. (i.e., ITU-T wavelengths on
service platforms directly connected to transmission layer).

* Link status interface based on industry standards (with extensions for
dense wavelength division multiplexing [DWDM] transport), designed to
determine the operational state and configuration on the edge of the
network between an edge device and the photonic domain.

* Ethernet-based optical supervisory interface for inter-photonic domain
communications.

* Distributed Optical control plane, which enables functions such as
discovery, photonic routing, performance management, monitoring and
adding/deleting of channels.

* Extending the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) generalized multi-
protocol label switching (GMPLS) signaling and routing standard with
extensions for the photonic domain - to address service activation,
restoration, path viability, wavelength selection and other photonic
aspects.

Comcast, Nortel and Cisco plan to promote the adoption of these defined common interfaces as open industry standards through standards bodies as appropriate and to promote broader interoperability between multiple vendor platforms within the global optical and IP industry.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com/. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that enhance the human experience, ignite and power global commerce, and secure and protect the world's most critical information. Serving both service provider and enterprise customers, Nortel delivers innovative technology solutions encompassing end-to-end broadband, Voice over IP, multimedia services and applications, and wireless broadband designed to help people solve the world's greatest challenges. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at http://www.nortel.com/. For the latest Nortel news, visit http://www.nortel.com/news.

About Comcast

Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA)(NASDAQ:CMCSK) (http://www.comcast.com/) is the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services. With 21.4 million cable customers, 8.1 million high-speed Internet customers, and 1.2 million voice customers, Comcast is principally involved in the development, management and operation of broadband cable networks and in the delivery of programming content.

The Company's content networks and investments include E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, The Golf Channel, OLN, G4, AZN Television, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One and four regional Comcast SportsNets. The Company also has a majority ownership in Comcast-Spectacor, whose major holdings include the Philadelphia Flyers NHL hockey team, the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team and two large multipurpose arenas in Philadelphia. Comcast Class A common stock and Class A Special common stock trade on The NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbols CMCSA and CMCSK, respectively.

Source: Comcast Corporation

CONTACT: Jeanne Russo of Comcast Corporation, +1-215-981-8552,
Jeanne_Russo@comcast.com; or Kevin Petschow of Cisco, +1-408-527-4743,
kpetscho@cisco.com; or Bo Gowan of Nortel, +1-972-685-8278,
bogowan@nortel.com

Web site: http://www.comcast.com/
http://www.cisco.com/
http://newsroom.cisco.com/
http://www.nortel.com/
http://www.nortel.com/news

-------
Profile: intent