Foundry Networks this week unleashed a series of Carrier Ethernet edge/aggregation switches designed to scale Ethernet services while reducing the burden on MPLS routers.

Foundry is unveiling six 1RU Carrier Ethernet switches under the NetIron CES 2000 brand. The switches feature 24- or 48-port gigabit Ethernet copper or fiber interfaces with optional dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. The switches support the IEEE 802.1ad Provider Bridge (PB) and 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) standards for scaling multipoint Ethernet services by hiding media access control (MAC) addresses.

Click to see: NetIron CES 2048FX switch

PB and PBB reduce the number of edge routers that need to establish a full mesh for Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS), Foundry says. They also lower signaling overhead, and isolate the MPLS edge device from learning customer MAC addresses, the company says.

The switches support Ethernet services such as E-Line, E-LAN and E-Tree, as well as Ethernet operations, administration and management capabilities, Foundry says. They also support IPv4 unicast and multicast operation, and run the same software as Foundry's NetIron XMR and MLX series routers.

The switches are optimized for delivery of enterprise Ethernet business services on a metro, national or global scale. They can also perform high density aggregation of DSLAM, PON or CMTS broadband access devices; delivery of FTTX with stringent service-level agreements; residential triple play services; and backhaul of mobile traffic.

They can also serve as aggregation devices at the edge of ISP networks; and as Layer 3 top-of-rack switches in data centers for access to servers, or as intra-domain edge routers for the data center boundary.

Pricing for the NetIron CES 2000 line starts at $8,495. They will be available in the fourth quarter.