Foundry Networks Inc., a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced that three carriers in Quebec, Canada -- Maskatel, Telephone Drummond and Telephone Guevremont -- have chosen Foundry Networks' NetIron MLX Series of metro routers for the delivery of triple-play services.

As part of the deployment, Maskatel, Telephone Drummond and Telephone Guevremont will collaborate to build a next-generation aggregation network that uses Foundry's IPv4/IPv6/MPLS enabled NetIron MLX Series routers for the delivery of triple-play services over a converged infrastructure. The ability to provide such next-generation services as Voice-over-IP (VoIP), broadband Internet access, IPTV and Video on Demand will allow these providers to offer new revenue generating value-added services to their existing customer base of both residential and business users. While offering the convenience of a single bill to end-users, the services will allow the three providers to realize increased Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) while potentially reducing churn by establishing a stickier end-customer.

High-performance aggregation networks are critical to ensure a high-quality experience to users of next-generation services. By using an MPLS infrastructure for these services, providers can ensure better Quality of Service (QoS) and build higher resiliency into the network. In addition, a common infrastructure can be used for the delivery of multiple services, thus lowering operational and capital costs. The ability to do sub-50 millisecond failure recovery with MPLS Fast Re-Route (FRR) on the NetIron MLX Series allows minimal disruption to traffic being transported through the network.

Foundry's NetIron MLX Series is the industry-leading metro Ethernet router platform for Ethernet, IPv4, IPv6, and MPLS based service deployments. Based on the award-winning architecture, it is purpose-built for bandwidth-intensive and QoS-sensitive applications such as IPTV, Video on Demand and VoIP. The NetIron MLX Series has a switch fabric capacity of 7.68 Tbps and peak processing speed of up to 2 billion packets per second. Its advanced architecture enables deterministic, wire-speed performance to be achieved with very low latency, thereby delivering a superior network experience for broadband users. The 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) ready architecture of the NetIron MLX provides unparalleled investment protection for service providers planning to build a next-generation network.

"Foundry Networks has a proven history in providing high-performance and scalable routing/switching platforms, and is well-recognized for its price-performance leadership," said Philippe Decary, network architect for Maskatel. "After a detailed analysis of different competitor offerings, we found the NetIron MLX Series to be the best platform that met our requirements for building a resilient, high-performance, high-quality, future-proof network."

"We are very pleased that Maskatel and its partners have selected the NetIron MLX Series of metro routers for the delivery of triple-play services over a broadband MPLS infrastructure," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager for Foundry Networks' High End and Service Provider Systems Business Unit. "Service providers require an advanced, future-proof platform for the delivery of next-generation services, and the NetIron MLX Series delivers this while also providing unmatched performance, scalability, resiliency, and reliability at a fraction of the price of alternative offerings."