Foundry Networks introduced packet-over-Sonet (POS) interfaces for its core and metro routers today.

The new cards for Foundry’s NetIron XMR backbone router and its MLX metro router are meant to help service providers make use of their existing Sonet networks as they migrate to carrier Ethernet. The cards support Ipv4, Ipv6, multiprotocol label switching and Ethernet traffic, all over Sonet.

“Many of the carriers today that already have Ethernet [networks] have not fully transitioned to carrier Ethernet,” said Ahmed Abdelhalim, director of product management for Foundry’s service provider business. “In many cases, carrier Ethernet operates as an experimental backbone. They still don’t have a cost-effective solution to connect the two backbones.”

OC-12 and OC-48 versions of the new cards will offer a choice of two, four or eight ports, and the OC-192 card will have either one or two ports. Prices for the OC-12 and OC-48 cards will start at $17,000 per port, and prices for the OC-192 card will start at $68,000 per port. Neither price includes pluggable optical transceivers, whose prices range between $1800 and $4000.

“With the new line cards, Foundry Networks has raised the price-performance benchmark,” Frost & Sullivan analyst Sam Masud said in a press release issued by Foundry today.

With the new cards, the NetIron XMR router can scale to 64 OC-192s or 256 OC-48s.

Service providers will also be able to use the cards to bond eight OC-192s for an 80-Gb/s logical link. “In a couple months,” Abdelhalim said, they’ll be able to bond twice as many.

The cards will be generally available starting next month.