Sorrento Networks today announced a new 10-Gb/s line card for its optical Ethernet transport systems that the vendor says should speed the turn up of new Ethernet services.

The new line card in Sorrento’s GigaMux 1600 and 3200 optical transport platforms allows carriers to combine 10 1-gigabit-per-second Ethernet links into 1 10Gb/s Ethernet link. Being able to share that bandwidth across several metro network nodes and pull it off where needed, in 1-Gb/s increments, will help carriers deal with uncertainty in anticipating future bandwidth needs, Sorrento said, and it will also help them turn up new services faster than their competitors.

“Now, instead of stranding bandwidth, [carriers] can share it,” said Jim Nevelle, Sorrento’s chief executive officer.

A Layer 2 switch built into the line card allows adds, drops, muxing and pass-through. “It allows you to direct traffic using Ethernet protocols instead of ROADMs or wavelengths,” Nevelle said. “But it’s not near the functionality of a full-blown Layer 2 switch.”

In the second quarter, Sorrento expects to introduce the ability to pull out bandwidth in smaller increments, such as 100 Mb/s or 50 Mb/s.

In a release issued by Sorrento today, Infonetics Research principal analyst Michael Howard agreed that the new line card, generally available later this month, should help turn on new Ethernet services faster.