3Com this week shipped its Switch 8800, the company’s core offering for large enterprise networks.

In every article about 3Com’s efforts to reach large enterprises, we’re obliged to at least mention how the company pulled out of the market several years ago. Part of me feels that it’s almost overkill to keep mentioning it - but on the other hand, there was a strong negative reaction among 3Com’s user base at the time, and that shouldn’t be discounted.

That negative reaction is probably driving 3Com’s announcement this week, which featured several customers that could attest to the value of Switch 8800. Only two of the customers are here in the U.S. - Covenant Health and Braintree Electric Light Department. There are also two countries’ defense organizations listed - those of Canada and the U.K. - and several customers in Europe and Asia.

The product itself has come out of 3Com’s close ties with Huawei Technologies. That partnership is at the heart of 3Com’s bid to return to large enterprises.

The Switch 8800 chassis comes in several models, ranging from seven slots to 14, but two of the slots would be taken up by switch fabric modules. Initial switch modules can handle up to 360G bit/sec each, but later versions will double that capacity, bringing the switches’ total above 1.4 terabits per second.

In a 3Com press release, early users tout Switch 8800’s reliability and the way it builds on past products while leading to future applications, such as IP telephony. The switch uses 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules developed for the earlier Switch 7700.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.