Foundry Unveils Compact Edge CE Switch Line

A 1-RU PBB-capable 10gbps Solution

Moving to address carriers’ growing interest in Carrier Ethernet as keystone infrastructure technology, Foundry Networks Inc.(FDRY) today took the wraps off the NetIron CES 2000 Series, a family of compact edge/aggregation products the vendor claims is the industry’s first collection of 1-RU PBB-capable 10gbps carrier Ethernet switches.

The market opportunity for the Carrier Ethernet switch router category into which the NetIron CES 2000 Series fits is expected to be $2.7 billion in 2009, and anticipated to reach $4.3 billion by 2011.

Noting this is Foundry’s most important product announcement of the year, Ananda Rajagopal, senior product marketing manager for the NetIron CES 2000, said the new line fits into the company’s overall strategy to deliver solutions that span from the core to the edge.

The NetIron CES 2000 comes in six models, which includes options for a full set of 24-port and 48-port RJ45 and fiber configurations, and optional 2x10-GE uplinks. NEBS Level 3 compliance certification for the products ─ which include hot-swappable, redundant, load sharing AC/DC power supplies and an N+1 redundant, replaceable cooling system ─ is pending. The products provide 128k MAC addresses, which Rajagopal indicated is very high relative to the number of MAC addresses supported by similar products. And the line supports IEEE 802.1ah (PBB), 802.1ad (PB) and 802.1Q, among other protocols. Rajagopal said another key feature of the NetIron CES 2000 line is its Ethernet Service Instance (ESI) framework, which provides a simple interface through which to manage VLANs.

The starting list prices of products in the NetIron CES 2000 line start at $8,495. General availability is slated to begin in the fourth quarter.

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