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Breaking News - Networking:

Foundry Expands High Performance Switching Solutions

Foundry Networks Inc, a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, announced immediate availability of its new 40-port high density Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) fiber module and introduced two new modules for its flagship, terabit-capacity Ethernet switching products, the BigIron MG8 and the NetIron 40G switches. The BigIron MG8 is Foundry's non-blocking 1.28 Tbps switch for enterprise applications requiring high-density Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) including high-speed enterprise backbones, converged campus networks, supercomputing clusters, grid computing and storage networks. The NetIron 40G is Foundry's non-blocking 1.28 Tbps Ethernet router designed for service providers who need a complete, robust set of IP routing protocols including BGP4, OSPF and IS-IS for Internet-grade scalable routing.

Both chassis-based products leverage Foundry's fourth generation Terathon switching ASICs, which deliver wire-speed switching and a non-blocking architecture to enable the next generation of enterprise and service provider networks. The BigIron MG8 has been shipping since September 2003 and has won major customers and performance awards around the world. Foundry is introducing the following new modules for each switch to complement the currently shipping 4-port 10GbE (with XENPAK optics) and 40-port fiber-based GbE (with SFP Small Form Factor Pluggable Optics) modules:

• 40-port 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet over Copper with RJ45 interfaces
• 2-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet with XENPAK optics

With the addition of the new Terathon modules, customers can deploy scalable, flexible and cost-effective combinations of GbE and 10GbE port configurations. When fully configured with the 40-port GbE modules, the MG8 and 40G will support 320 non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single chassis and 960 non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet ports in a standard seven-foot equipment rack. When fully configured with the 4-port 10GbE module, the MG8 and 40G will support 32 10GbE ports in a single chassis and 96 10GbE ports in a standard seven-root rack. These Gigabit and 10 Gigabit densities are unmatched in the industry and establish the BigIron MG8 and NetIron 40G as the most scalable, non-blocking Ethernet switches on the market.

"Our next-generation supercomputing program requires that we deploy high-quality and high-performance computing and switching products to achieve the extreme levels of performance called out by the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative's (ASCI) Red Storm specification," said Leonard Stans, manager of the Advanced Networking Integration Department for Sandia National Laboratories. "The BigIron MG8 plays an integral role in our supercomputing network, providing the low-latency, wire-speed front-end interconnect. The four-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet module and new 40-port Gigabit modules provide an effective solution to our Red Storm networking requirements."

All the Terathon modules are designed for the wire-speed, non-blocking demands of high-performance networking environments. The distributed switching architecture is ideally suited for the most demanding high speed networks, for scalability and enhanced application performance. The BigIron MG8 and NetIron 40G switches are the only products in their class that can sustain 40 Gbps, full-duplex Ethernet throughput per module independent of packet size and application.

The BigIron MG8 and the NetIron 40G switches deliver the lowest port-to-port latency for terabit-capacity Ethernet switches and routers in the industry. Featuring non-blocking performance, wire-speed traffic monitoring, IronWare switching and routing intelligence, wire-speed IronShield security, jumbo frame support and as little as seven microsecond port-to-port latency, these switches deliver the features and performance required by the most demanding service provider and enterprise environments including: metro Ethernet networks, enterprise backbones, networked storage and high-performance and cluster computing interconnects.

"Consistent with our momentum in the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market, Foundry is seeing growing customer interest in the BigIron MG8 and NetIron 40G for high-performance environments," said Ken Cheng, vice president of marketing for Foundry. "While our customers have been asking for high-density Gigabit and 10 Gigabit solutions for the data center, they do not want to compromise network performance and reliability. The Terathon-class switches and routers and their line of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit port modules address these requirements, allowing customers to build reliable, scalable and high-performance Ethernet solutions very cost-effectively."