Foundry Networks Product Blitz Pushes 10-Gigabit Ethernet
The new products range from low-cost edge and aggregation switches to large enterprise Layer2/Layer 3 switches. Foundry's new 8-port GbE module for its BigIron MG8 switch offers a highly scalable solution for large enterprises with up to 64 GbE ports in a single switch. The BigIron switch is designed for high-density, bandwidth-intensive enterprise and service provider data centers.
Foundry has also announced the FastIron Workgroup X424 and X448 wire-speed 10/100/1000 Layer 2 edge switches. They are designed for high availability and feature 24 and 48 Gigabit over copper ports, respectively, and one or two 10 GbE uplinks. The EdgeIron 8X10G 8-port 10 GbE aggregation switch offers hot-pluggable XFP 10 GbE optics and rates up to 120 million packets per second in a compact unit designed for cluster and high-density environments. Most importantly, it drives the price-per-port of 10 GbE as low as $2,500.
That price point is an important target for equipment vendors hoping to drive 10 GbE into the mainstream. "Industry analysts have been predicting a sharp ramp in 10-GbE customer adoptions in the late 2005 or 2006 timeframe, coinciding with 10-GbE prices dropping to less than $3,000 per port," Foundry vice president and general manager of the Layer 2/3 Switching and routing solutions, Ken Cheng said in a statement. "With this announcement, Foundry's product evolution and price/performance is ahead of this price curve by more than a year."
With the announcement of its 10 GbE WAN PHY optical transceiver, Foundry offers a lower-cost, Ethernet-based alternative to SONET/OC-192 fiber optic networks. The company says that the transceiver will accelerate 10 GbE deployment by enabling high performance links between local area, metro and wide-area networks. The new 10GBASE-LW WAN PHY optic encapsulates Ethernet frames in SONET frames at OC-192 rates. This technology can connect to divisional wavelength multiplexers and can carry native 10 Gb Ethernet over OC-192 networks.
This story courtesy of Networking Pipeline