Foundry's MG8 features

The MG8 offers a solid feature set. Its command-line interface bears a strong resemblance to Cisco's IOS, which should be reassuring to the legions of network professionals trained in IOS.

The MG8 supports all standard IPv4 routing protocols, and in our test demonstrated the ability to hold hundreds of thousands of routes - far more than even very large companies are likely to need. Further, Foundry  demonstrated three methods of "trunking," or aggregating circuits between chassis:

•  A proprietary Foundry method.
•  IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation.
•   OSPF ECMP.

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The MG8 offers a solid feature set. Its command-line interface bears a strong resemblance to Cisco's IOS, which should be reassuring to the legions of network professionals trained in IOS.

The MG8 supports all standard IPv4 routing protocols, and in our test demonstrated the ability to hold hundreds of thousands of routes - far more than even very large companies are likely to need. Further, Foundry  demonstrated three methods of "trunking," or aggregating circuits between chassis:

•  A proprietary Foundry method.
•  IEEE 802.3ad link aggregation.
•   OSPF ECMP.

For network management, Foundry supports sFlow , which offers detailed monitoring and reporting on individual flows.

On the downside, the MG8's support for Secure Shell is limited to Version 1 of the protocol, despite that version's known security  vulnerabilities.

Read more about lans & wans in Network World's LANs & WANs section.