Through its portfolio of Ethernet service cards, the Cisco ONS 15454 MSPP has enabled service providers and enterprises to effectively and efficiently expand their network capability from transporting only time-division multiplexing (TDM) services to delivering multiple services over a single, converged architecture and eliminating the need for multiple overlay infrastructures. With the introduction of the Cisco ONS 15454 CE-Series 10-Port Multirate Ethernet Card (CE-MR), the Cisco CE-Series card portfolio - which includes the 10/100 Mbps (CE-100) and the 1000 Mbps (CE-1000) cards on the Cisco ONS 15454 and 15310 platforms - gives service providers the ability to scale from 1.5-Mbps to 1-Gigabit Ethernet Private Line services. Additionally, the Cisco CE-MR card provides the service flexibility for customers to deploy multirate Ethernet services (10,100, 1000 Mbps) over a single card by supporting 10 Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP)-based multirate ports.The Cisco CE-MR (Figure 1) meets important requirements for an end-to-end Ethernet Private Line application with features such as generic framing procedure (GFP), virtual concatenation (VCAT), software link capacity adjustment scheme (LCAS and SW-LCAS), link integrity, and comprehensive Ethernet and SONET statistics - including bandwidth utilization statistics and flow control. The Cisco CE-MR, with GFP and VCAT, helps service providers and enterprises maximize bandwidth utilization and promote industry-wide interoperability for Ethernet Private Line services. With LCAS, the Cisco CE-MR gives service providers the flexibility to dynamically add and remove bandwidth on Ethernet Private Line services. Ethernet and SONET statistics provide service-monitoring capabilities. For example, bandwidth utilization statistics reveal the usage patterns of end customers - data that can be critical for operations personnel or for network and business planners. Features such as link integrity provide faster convergence capability to end customers' Layer 2 networks connected through Ethernet private lines.The Cisco ONS 15454 MSPP is the optical industry's first metro optical transport platform. It combines supercharged SONET/SDH transport, integrated optical networking (ITU grid wavelengths and DWDM, for example), and unprecedented multiservice interfaces on demand (such as TDM, Ethernet/IP, and storage) to deliver enormous economic benefits. The Cisco ONS 15454 provides the functions of multiple network elements in a single platform. As a critical component of a complete, end-to-end, advanced service architecture from Cisco, the Cisco ONS 15454 delivers a scalable optical transport mechanism and the intelligent Ethernet/IP support to cost-effectively deliver next-generation voice and data services.Cisco continues its tradition of converged network services leadership with the introduction of the CE-MR card to the Cisco CE-Series, enabling the efficient delivery of Ethernet Private Line services without a major overhaul or redesign of existing transport infrastructure.