[By NBC-1TV H. J Yook]Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) announced today FastSMP™, a next generation network protection solution designed for Infinera's DTN-X platform(http://www.infinera.com/products/DTN-X.html) offering service providers increased network resiliency with protection against multiple failures while simultaneously lowering the total cost of ownership.

With FastSMP™, Infinera is delivering the industry's only hardware-based Shared Mesh Protection (SMP) solution based on the FastSMP™ processor, a hardware acceleration chip that enables recovery from multiple-failures in less than 50 milliseconds (ms). This hardware chip is pre-installed on the DTN-X and can be enabled via a simple software upgrade ensuring complete investment protection for customers building their networks with the DTN-X. Infinera has shipped more than 2,000 100G ports to date and every port shipped is ready to be upgraded to FastSMP™.

“Current approaches to network resiliency are inadequate to meet the rapidly evolving network performance and cost requirements of service providers,” said Michael Kennedy, Principal Analyst at ACG Research. “SMP utilizes the best attributes of 1+1 protection and MPLS FRR for operators to offer a range of new services with multi-tiered protection levels. We found up to 33% lower total cost of ownership for SMP as compared with 1+1 protection.”

Infinera FastSMP™ delivers key benefits to service providers and their customers:

· Deterministic Protection: providing recovery for multiple failures within 50ms versus software-based Shared Mesh Restoration which can take multiple seconds to recover.

· Enhanced Availability: 1+1 can only protect against a single failure. FastSMP™ leverages intelligent GMPLS control to provide multiple backups with continuous real-time path re-computation ensuring better survivability for every protected service.

· Cost-effective Deployment: in contrast to 1+1 protection it allows for sharing of backup resources with priority pre-emption to lower overall capex and opex costs.

With FastSMP™ network operators can offer sub 50ms protected services like 1+1 protection but with higher availability and reduced costs. Since it utilizes the digital transport layer it provides better network economics than packet-based solutions and recovers from local as well as remote failures across thousands of nodes within 50ms offering better protection than MPLS Fast Re-Route in many scenarios.

“Pacnet's unique position is its ability to offer true long haul submarine mesh architecture on its core network within the APAC region,” said Andy Lumsden, Pacnet Chief Technology Officer. “Our selection of the DTN-X has provided new levels of scale for our network allowing us to accommodate customer traffic and deliver high capacity services faster than our competitors. The combination of the Infinera DTN-X platform and its hardware-accelerated FastSMP™ approach will provide Pacnet with a combination of resiliency, capacity and flexibility needed to meet the highest demands of our customers.”

“Infinera is committed to being the leader in transport networking innovation,” said Dave Welch, Co-founder, EVP, and Chief Strategy Officer Infinera. “Infinera has revolutionized the industry with the DTN-X delivering 500G super-channels based on large scale photonic integrated circuits. Now Infinera FastSMP™ offers a solution that offers a more resilient mesh network, protecting our customers' services and lowering total network cost.”