About Us

Fact Sheet

Mission

To bring to market leading edge, low power semiconductor and software solutions that have been built from the ground up to support the latest carrier Ethernet standards which require NO PROGRAMMING to implement and provide WIRE-RATE delivery ALL THE TIME. We intend to exceed customers expectations in customer service and design support and will do everything we can to accelerate our customers time to market.

Company Profile

Lightstorm Networks is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions enabling high-performance carrier-grade Ethernet networks. We design, develop and supply complete semiconductor solutions as well as provide hardware and software subsystems. Lightstorm relies on the vast experience of its world-class design team to provide top-quality silicon products to our telecommunications partners. We have an unrivalled wealth of experience in developing networking semiconductor products that are both leading edge and first to market. Our inclusion in international standards bodies and our ability to leverage emerging technologies ensures our products can enable next-generation carrier Ethernet services.

Market Opportunity

95% of the world's data traffic starts and ends as Ethernet—but carrier networks predominantly use legacy technology to transport data traffic that is encapsulated in connection-oriented protocols. Ethernet is well on its way toward becoming the dominant technology used by service providers to connect enterprise networks. Carrier-grade Ethernet is needed to leverage the cost and simplicity of Ethernet, but to be effectively utilized by carriers it must have the scalability, QoS, monitoring and protection capabilities enabled by prior generations of technologies such as ATM and SONET. At Lightstorm, we believe packet transport technologies such as MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Ethernet are the future. Driven by emerging standards, carrier networks are now rapidly adopting a network model that utilizes these new packet technologies at the edge and core.

These new initiatives combined with a robust silicon ecosystem are designed to take Ethernet and MPLS further into the most demanding networks that require guaranteed service delivery, unprecedented scalability and high reliability. Lightstorm is committed to delivering these technologies for network equipment providers and delivering feature-rich functionality with future-proof flexibility. By combining our unique knowledge of these emerging trends with patent-pending intellectual property and utilizing hundreds of man-years of experience in complex chip design, Lightstorm Networks is perfectly positioned to provide first-class silicon solutions to our customers.

Standards

Lightstorm supports standards from the IEEE, IETF, Metro Ethernet Forum and the ITU and develops interoperable solutions that support current and emerging network standards. We support the emerging Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) and the Provider Backbone Bridging with Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) standards as well as the Transport-MPLS (T-MPLS) networking paradigm for support of Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) and Virtual Private Wire Services (VPWS). Lightstorm offers a complete range of standards-based solutions that allow network equipment providers to enable next-generation optical transport services using the latest carrier Ethernet standards.

Products

All Lightstorm products are developed within the Lightstorm Solas Architecture, which is purpose-built for the carrier market and provides a scalable hardware and software roadmap over several generations. The company has recently launched its first silicon solutions to the market, and these products include:

• The Brooklyn-10 Carrier Ethernet Switch is a carrier-grade Layer 2 switch with an integrated 20G traffic manager. It delivers efficient and intelligent performance without the need for data path programming required by today's complex NPUs. The Brooklyn-10 offers significant scalability, the latest Metro Ethernet Forum-defined QoS capabilities, OAM support and protection. It is a complete PBB, PBB-TE, VPLS and VPWS solution for the carrier Ethernet market.
• The Solas Software Suite is a complete carrier Ethernet software development platform, including easy-to-use and well documented APIs, drivers and development tools. It also includes integration layers to leading carrier Ethernet protocol stacks for rapid time to market. The Solas Software Suite is designed to significantly reduce software development efforts since it allows customers to program and deploy the device without needing to understand Brooklyn-10 internal device structure and operations.
• The B-10 Development Platform is a 3RU development system that demonstrates the functionality of the Brooklyn-10 and partner silicon solutions. It has a variety of network and client port options to enable a wide range of testing and development configurations.

Target Customers

Lightstorm sells its innovative solution primarily through a regional direct sales channel to network equipment manufacturers. Network equipment providers choose to work with Lightstorm because our semiconductor solutions allow them to develop feature-rich networking products without complex network processor programming. Our customers can offer products with the latest carrier-class feature sets, and can rely on proven compliance and performance while accelerating their time to market.

Contact Information

Lightstorm is based just outside of Boston in Waltham Massachusetts and in several locations in Ireland. For more information visit the contact us page and register, or send an email to info@lightstormnetworks.com.