ATLANTA -- Cox Communications is using Ciena’s CN 4200™ FlexSelect Advanced Services Platform to provide optical transport for both its commercial traffic and its triple-play consumer services, the two companies announced here today.

Cox is the fourth cable company to deploy the Ciena CN 4200, but the first to use its versatility to support not only its video-on-demand service but also its voice and data services, said Mitch Auster, senior director, product marketing, for Ciena.

Cox started using the CN 4200 as an optical Ethernet network to support its VoD service and now it merging its VoIP and data services onto the same optical network.

Because the Ciena CN4200 enables Cox to move from an OC-48 optical ring that connected its video hubs to a centralized Gigabit Ethernet hub-and-spoke network, Cox is able to make more efficient use of available bandwidth, said Auster.

“Traffic used to go from one hub to the next until it reached the head-end on the optical ring,” he said. “That added latency and jitter. Plus they needed the of 10-Gigabit Ethernet for VoD. They put in optical Ethernet, and although it was connected in a physical ring, it is a logical hub and spoke network from the head-end to individual distribution hub.”

Because the Ciena CN 4200 is a multi-service platform that can support multiple approaches to delivering different types of traffic, Cox can also support hub-to-hub traffic for commercial services that use more of a mesh network approach for distributing voice traffic without hauling it to a centralized location.

“Because Cox is a leader in the cable industry in providing commercial services, they can use different options for different types of traffic,” Auster said.