Foundry readies monster Ethernet switch

---

Observers say Foundry's big swing — a 5-terabit, 128-port 10G Ethernet switch — could be a knockout blow to Force10, Extreme and startup Woven Systems, in high-end data center switching. At the show Foundry will launch its biggest-yet Ethernet switch — the BigIron RX32 — aimed at ultra high-density enterprise data centers, and carrier networks. The box supports up to 128 line-rate 10G Ethernet ports; twice the amount of its previous BigIron RX16, and more than double currently shipping high-end gear such as Force10's TeraScale, Cisco's Catalyst 6500 and Extreme's BlackDiamond. (only Woven Systems's EFS 1000 scales higher, to 144 10G ports).

"Customers have come to us, historically, because we've sold the biggest, baddest boxes," says Foundry CEO Bobby Johnson, calling the RX32 the new head of the company's high-end switch family.

At almost $200,000 for just the RX32 chassis (no line cards), the BigIron RX32's market may be select, but it is growing, Johnson says.

"There are a lot of customers who do need this level of performance, scalability and port density," he says, such as large university campus LAN backbones, enterprises involved with data mining, as well as research networks doing high-performance computing and clustering.

In courting theses types of customers with its high-end switch, Foundry hopes to gain some headway in the 10G Ethernet market, where it has fallen behind Cisco and Force10 in terms of shipments and revenue, according to research from the Dell'Oro group.

Nortel's enterprise push

Meanwhile, Nortel's entry into application acceleration, and its new combo WAN router/VoIP platform, will be more like jabs and feints at market leaders such as Cisco, Juniper, F5 and Citrix.

In addition to the two forthcoming, specialized blades, the Secure Router 4134 also combines Nortel's Contivity VPN and firewall technology, with its Tasman-based WAN router platform, as well as integrated LAN switching options for branch offices.

Nortel is also entering the Web application acceleration market at Interop with the launch of its Nortel Application Accelerator 510 and 610 appliances. These devices, indented to compete with Web accelerators from F5, Citrix/Netscaler, Radware and others, would sit in front of a bank of Web servers and provide data compression, protocol offload and content caching. This could allow a pool of servers providing Web access to SAP, Microsoft Outlook, IBM WebSphere, or other platforms, to operate as much as 20 times faster, Nortel claims.

However, one analyst says vendors in the acceleration market have already escalated the technology far beyond what Nortel is bringing to the fight.

"The enterprise application acceleration market has grown by leaps and bounds," says Yankee Group Analyst Zeus Kerravala, as companies such as F5, Citrix, Juniper and others have acquired or developed advanced technologies and long lists of customers. "Nortel should have had this vision a couple years ago; it will be going up against competitors that have at least a one or two-year lead."