* Two Gigabit Ethernet switches from Allied Telesis
Allied Telesis in recent weeks released two Gigabit Ethernet switches – a 48-port switch and a Layer 3 modular switch.
The company this week shipped the 48-port Gigabit Ethernet WebSmart Switch for small offices and workgroups. Also called the AT-GS950/48, the switch has 44 ports of 10/100/1000Mbps copper-based Ethernet, plus four combination ports that can be used to provide more of those copper connections, or can be swapped out for fiber-optic ports.
Allied Telesis describes the target market this way:
“The AT-GS950/48 WebSmart switch is designed for smaller networks that require a certain level of VLAN segmentation, Quality of Service (QoS) and security but do not need full network management capability.”
It supports IEEE 802.1Q virtual LANs, and it has four priority queues. The company says that support should make it appropriate for converged networks of voice, video and data. For security, the switch supports IEEE 802.1x user authentication. The list price is about $1,000.
Last month, Allied Telesis also introduced a Layer 3 modular switch, the SwitchBlade x908, which is aimed more at midsized business and up. It has a 640Gbps switching fabric and a non-blocking architecture. It supports IPv6 and multicast and can prioritize different types of traffic.
You can stack two x908 switches, linking them through a special 80Gbps link for redundancy, which Allied Telesis says is like having a dual-controller chassis at a lower cost. The switches also have hot swappable power supplies and fan modules.
With a plug-in module, up to four of the switches can be stacked, and if you wanted to, you could have as many as 336 Gigabit Ethernet ports in that stack.
