Oct. 26, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that its CN 5305^™ Service Aggregation Switch received the highest possible ranking – 5 out of 5 diamonds – in Broadband Gear Report’s (BGR) 2009 Diamond Technology Reviews. Based on BGR’s product rating system of 0 to 5 diamonds, a score of 5 is considered to be “a superb product that sets a new standard for performance and provides groundbreaking new technical milestones.” Platforms within Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) portfolio (CESD) portfolio, which includes CN 5305, have been deployed by more than 100 carriers, wireless service providers, cable operators and new entrants in 25 countries, including recent deployments by Clearwire and Mzima Networks.

Based on Ciena’s field-proven True Carrier Ethernet^® technology, CN 5305 is optimized for metro edge networks and delivers high-density Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connectivity to the subscriber edge and high-performance 10GbE uplinks to the service provider core. It combines the low cost and high capacity of Ethernet with the reliability, management and service quality typically associated with SONET/SDH systems. CN 5305 features a software architecture based on a common, service-aware operating system that is used across Ciena’s entire CESD portfolio, providing a consistent deployment model and zero-touch, automated device configuration and service provisioning that can result in up to 60 percent faster service provisioning and as much as 40 percent reduction in operational expense versus platforms that rely on manual configurations.

"Ciena's CN 5305 Service Aggregation Switch received superlative rankings in this year's Diamond Technology Reviews program with the judges paying particular notice to its robustness,” said Laura Hamilton, editor-in-chief at BGR. “The panelists who reviewed the solution saw it as an elegant way for cable operators to contend with mixing and managing multiple service encapsulation formats and handing them off successfully between the access and core networks.”

The Diamond Technology Reviews are an annual product rating program where a group of senior broadband industry engineering professionals organized by BGR’s editorial team analyze product applications submitted by the broadband industry’s vendor community. This year, the judges included executives from Armstrong, Charter, Cox, Rogers, Suddenlink and Sunflower Broadband. The full results of the judging will be published both in BGR as well as in a special print issue to be distributed at SCTE’s Cable-Tec Expo, from October 28-30, 2009 in Denver, Colo.