Meriton Moves From Metro Into Access – Meriton Networks 3300 – Brief Article
Ed Gubbins
Byline: Ed Gubbins
The new access device promised by start-up metro core switch vendor Meriton Networks last December, when it nabbed $17 million in new funding, is finally here.
Meriton’s new customer premises device, the 3300, uses coarse or dense wavelength division multiplexing to deliver 1.5 Mb/s to 2.7 Gb/s of traffic (with 10 Gb/s expected next year) to its 7200s in the metro core. Although it covers a range of transport speeds, Meriton said its gear is most cost effective at 100 Mb/s and above.
Meriton will debut the 3300 at the NFOEC conference in Orlando this week, along with two other new products for amplifying signal strength and cleaning up dispersion. The company sees storage area networks (SANs) among large enterprises as one of the primary drivers for the 3300, said Rob Gaudet, director of product management. Market research firm IDC predicts worldwide metro WDM revenues from SANs to rise from $166 million this year to $217 million next year and maintain an annual growth rate of about 24% through 2007.
But Meriton will have to share the market not only with rival start-ups such as Movaz Networks, but also with established leaders like Nortel Networks, Ciena and Adva Optical Networking.
Meriton plans to test the system with a European carrier, but won’t name customers or specify how many it has.
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