Case Study: CDE Lightband delivers citywide 1 GbE to every customer and scales to 10 GbE with Brocade

Metro Provider Offers Active Ethernet to Every Customer

CDE Lightband is the municipal utility in Clarksville, Tennessee, delivering power, TV, Internet and voice to about 60,000 customers across a 100‑square‑mile service area. Rising demand for HDTV and video‑on‑demand caused pixelation at peak times and forced the utility to find a scalable, carrier‑class Layer‑3 platform that could support 10 GbE and deliver a true 1 GbE fiber connection to every home and business to stay competitive.

CDE Lightband upgraded to a Brocade-based solution—MLX routers, NetIron CES 2000 edge switches, 10 GbE blades and Network Advisor—to build an Active Ethernet FTTP network with dedicated 1 GbE ports per subscriber. The deployment eliminated peak‑time degradation, enabled premium pricing for high‑bandwidth services, cut total cost of ownership and line‑rate throughput costs (about 90%), increased performance and subscriber density, and future‑proofed the network for IPv6 and growth.

CDE LightBand

Brian Taylor

Superintendent