Mangrove Systems, a start-up based in Wallingford, CT, unveiled its Piranha and Barracuda MetroMPLS Access and Switching platforms. The Mangrove products are designed for delivering Metro Ethernet Forum services, MPLS pseudowires, multi-service support using new, efficient data-over-transport standards. The MetroMPLS family encompasses the following models:
- Piranha 100 Access Multiplexer — a compact, high performance system for customer-located access to the MPLS core,
- Piranha 600 Access Concentrator — a fault-tolerant, multi-service aggregation system designed for both customer located and central office installations,
- Barracuda Enhanced Services Shelf — a central office packet aware transport system for hubbing and aggregation of packet and circuit traffic arriving from the access network,
- Osprey Management System — a standards-based EMS/NMS platform designed to manage a network of Mangrove platforms. Osprey scales from a single node, web-based embedded management tool to a full multi-server network management solution.
Each MetroMPLS system includes a combination of Metro Ethernet Forum E-Line and E-LAN, ATM and Frame Relay services, each supported using MPLS pseudowires operating over an efficient GFP packet transport within virtually concatenated SONET or SDH paths. The architecture extends the MPLS control and data plane to the customer edge, enabling establishment of new customer services over pre-configured bandwidth.
Piranha 100 and 600 platforms support DS1/E1, DS3/E3, OC3/STM-1 to OC- 48/STM-16, SAN, 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Barracuda system interfaces scale from DS3/E3 to OC-192/STM-64 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
Each of Mangrove’s platforms support both optical and Ethernet trunking, making them suitable as access products for existing SONET/SDH and new Metro Ethernet infrastructures. At the optical layer, full compliance with SONET/SDH standards for linear APS/MSP and UPSR/SNCP is assured, in addition to a unique, pluggable OADM option for low-cost, CWDM-based access ring architectures.
Key technology features of the Piranha and Barracuda systems include Mangrove’s Interworking Engine; an integrated engine for providing Layer 2 service interworking functions for Frame Relay, ATM, Ethernet and MPLS services, and traffic management to ensure that each service receives its committed Quality of Service guarantee, ensuring protection for the network and performance against a provider Service Level Agreement. http://www.mangrovesystems.com/
- In May 2004, Mangrove Systems, a start-up based in Wallingford, CT, outlined its vision for extending MPLS convergence to the metro and access network infrastructure. Mangrove believes that core networks are fundamentally divided between MPLS and Optical infrastructures. In the metro, a single converged architecture that supports traditional data, Ethernet, private line, VoIP and SAN applications is required. This new converged metro and access network requires new L1 / L2 platforms capable of extending MPLS to a customer premise but without disrupting existing fiber plant, SONET/SDH network elements or operational support systems. Mangrove’s MetroMPLS would enable service providers to move service demarcation from the core MPLS network, out to the customer location or access network. Its network architecture leverages recently developed Pseudowire (PWE3) and data over SONET/SDH standards along with network processors and a new generation of multiservice framers. Mangrove will use PWE3 (Martini / Pseudowire) as its service multiplexing layer of choice and GFP is the framing & encapsulation technology of choice. The combination of PWE3 over GFP enables any service to be carried over a common transport. Mangrove said that by blending Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) and MPLS, its MetroMPLS enables existing and planned services to share an efficient, unified access network.
- Mangrove Systems is using Agere’s new Datamapper and MARS T-PHY for its MetroMPLS access and metro equipment platforms.
- Mangrove Systems is headed by Jonathan Reeves, who formerly founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Sahara Networks (acquired by Cascade and then Ascend), and who also founded Sirocco Systems (acquired by Sycamore Networks). Mangrove’s technical team also includes John Gamelin (Vice President of Technology) and Paul Doolan (Vice President of Network Architecture). Gamelin previously served as co-founder and later, Vice President of Engineering with Tellium. Before that, he was a senior scientist at Bellcore. Doolan is credited with early development work in MPLS, including work on Cisco’s Tag Distribution Protocol (TDP).
