Rochester, N.H. - Cabletron Systems, Inc. last week announced two enhanced ATM switches that are 50 times faster and about 50% less expensive than the company's current line.
Previously called SmartCell, the new SmartSwitch 2500 workgroup and backbone boxes feature FastCast, a high-speed processing engine. FastCast sports a 150-MHz dual-processor CPU that can forward LAN Emulation broadcast packets at greater than 100,000 packet/sec. Both boxes support 2.5G bit/ sec of switching capacity.
The SmartSwitch includes support for the latest ATM Forum specifications for signaling and routing, such as User-Network Interface (UNI) 4.0 signaling and Private Network-to-Network Interface (PNNI) 1.0 dynamic routing. Cabletron is one of the first companies to ship UNI 4.0 signaling, which defines how virtual circuits are automatically established and then taken down in an ATM network. PNNI 1.0 is a stronger version of Interim Interswitch Signaling Protocol (IISP). Unlike IISP, which forced users to configure circuits manually, PNNI 1.0 is virtually plug-and-play.
"The more switches you have, the more you want to have PNNI _ not only for the features but to keep you sane," said Byron Young, Cabletron's director of marketing for ATM.
Cabletron also has added new high-speed WAN modules to the line, including OC-3, DS-3, E-3 and OC-12. The SmartSwitch 2500 Workgroup switch, with a 12-port OC-3 configuration starts at $8,495. The SmartSwitch 2500 Backbone switch starts at $11,995. The WAN interfaces are priced as follows: $6,995 for the four-port DS-3 and E-3 modules; $9,995 for the four-port OC-3 module; and $9,995 for the one-port OC-12 module.
For more information, contact Cabletron at (603) 332-9400.
