* Foundry, Nortel, WLAN vendors make noise at Interop
There’s plenty of news already coming out of the Interop Las Vegas 2007 trade show this week, from 802.11n products to a new router from Nortel to a big honking switch from Foundry Networks.
Foundry has gone decidedly old-school with its approach to this year’s big networking trade show, introducing a new flagship LAN switch that gives the company some bragging rights on capacity and port density.
My colleague Phil Hochmuth has lots of details, but the gist is that the BigIron RX32 chassis-based switch is a beast, with 32 slots, 5.1 terabits per second of capacity, and the ability to support up to 768 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 128 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
John Cox looks at WLAN products based on the IEEE’s 802.11n, which isn’t exactly a standard yet. The lack of standard isn’t stopping vendors from showing enterprise gear based on Draft 2 of the specification, which can deliver up to 200Mbps of throughput.
Many in the industry are insisting that the final spec will end up being very close to Draft 2, and WLAN vendors are in a big hurry to bring the technology to the next step. The result: Interop is shaping up to be the launching pad for the new spec.
Meanwhile, Nortel is introducing a branch-office router with integrated security and VoIP features. Again, Phil Hochmuth has details, and even a slideshow.
The Secure Router 4134 has technology from a joint development deal with Microsoft – which luckily pertains to the VoIP features rather than the security features. In the future the box will be able to act as a remote-office gateway for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server, Hochmuth reports.
Keep up with Interop news throughout the week at Network World.
