Infineon to Develop Resilient Packet Ring Devices for Metropolitan Networks
SAN JOSE, Calif. & MUNICH, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 29,
2002--
Company Driving New Standardization to Extend Gigabit Ethernet
Into Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks
Infineon Technologies (NYSE:IFX - news; FSE:IFX), a leading provider of
communications ICs and fiber optics components, today announced that
it is developing devices incorporating OC-192 Resilient Packet Ring
technology, a technology that is currently being standardized in the
IEEE 802.17 committee and that will extend Gigabit Ethernet into
Metropolitan and Wide Area Networks, paving the way for Gigabit
Ethernet metro services. The new devices will augment Infineon's
recently announced industry leading 40Gbps high-speed framing,
mapping, and mux/demux line card solutions.
Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) is gaining rapid momentum within the
industry and will play a critical role in offering service providers
the ability to create high-speed metropolitan networks that transport
voice and data traffic efficiently while lowering both capital expense
as well as ongoing operational expenses. RPR, a Layer Two media access
control (MAC) technology, significantly increases the bandwidth
efficiency of service provider networks by utilizing twice the
capacity of traditional SONET/SDH rings. RPR delivers dynamic
bandwidth management while preserving the same kind of protection and
resiliency found in SONET/SDH networks.
In an effort to accelerate industry availability of RPR products,
Infineon is licensing Cisco's widely deployed Spatial Reuse Protocol
(SRP), a technology now used by over 190 service providers worldwide.
SRP is a MAC-layer protocol for ring-based packet internetworking and
is open and freely available as IETF Informational RFC 2892.
Additionally, SRP has been submitted to the IEEE 802.17 Working Group.
Cisco uses SRP in their Dynamic Packet Transport (DPT) products to
deliver scalability, reliability, and simplicity to next-generation
packet-based metro networks.
"Infineon, with its expertise in IC technology, will provide
highly-integrated, low-power, small foot print devices for SRP and for
emerging 802.17 RPR networks," said Tony Bates, vice president,
Internet Routing Group at Cisco Systems. "Infineon's contribution to
the RPR efforts will help further the rapid deployment of revenue
generating Resilient Packet Ring networks by service providers."
"This move reinforces Infineon's commitment to provide complete,
standards-based high-speed line card solutions for the optical
networking market. RPR networks will enable service providers to
combine the reliability of traditional SONET/SDH rings with the
richness and scalability of data networks, and to eliminate critical
bottlenecks in existing metro networks," said Gerhard Geiger, senior
vice president and general manager of Infineon's Communication Group.
"We are excited to team with Cisco Systems to deliver time-to-market
RPR solutions that benefit service providers."
"Infineon is pleased to be developing industry leading IEEE 802.17
compliant RPR products for high speed Metropolitan Networks," said
Christian Scherp, vice president of Marketing of Infineon's Optical
Networking Business Unit. "Our goal is to deliver standards-based
products to the optical networking industry, starting with these
products that will be designed to enable a seamless integration of
voice and data traffic."
Infineon is an active member of the IEEE 802.17 committee and will
work with other participants to drive RPR standards to speed up
industry availability of standard compliant RPR products.
About Infineon
Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor
and system solutions for applications in the wired and wireless
communications markets, for security systems and smartcards, for the
automotive and industrial sectors, as well as memory products. With a
global presence, Infineon operates in the U.S. from San Jose, Calif.,
in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In
the fiscal year 2001 (ending September), the company achieved sales of
Euro 5.67 billion with about 33,800 employees worldwide. Infineon is
listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and on the New
York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol:IFX). Further information is
available at www.infineon.com.
This news release is available online at
http://www.infineon.com/news/
Contact:
Infineon Technologies
Reiner Schoenrock, +49-89-234-29593 (Headquarters)
reiner.schoenrock@infineon.com
Matt Schmidt, 408/501-6390 (United States)
matt.schmidt@infineon.com
Kaye Lim, +65-8400-689 (Asia)
kaye.lim@infineon.com
Hirotaka Shiroguchi, +81-3-5449-6795 (Japan)
hirotaka.shiroguchi@infineon.com
Investor Relations, +49-89-234-26655
investor.relations@infineon.com
