* Force10 Networks' switches
Force10 Networks plans to enter the LAN edge/wiring-closet market this week with new switches that bring data-center scale and resiliency to the LAN edge.
Force10 says its new S-Series stackable switches can handle most of the tasks required by users, including powering IP phones and Wi-Fi access points, providing port-level security as well as fault-tolerant network connections. The company says it has added big bandwidth, low latency and resilient hardware from its high-end data center and core products, which make the new S-Series a solid choice for a wiring closet box.
The S-Series S50V is a 48-port 10/100/1000Mbps switch with Power over Ethernet support on all triple-speed ports. It can be outfitted with as many as four optional 10G Ethernet uplinks ports, or Gigabit ports for connecting to a LAN aggregation or core layer. The S-Series S25V is a 24-port switch with two models: one with 24 copper-based Gigabit Ethernet; another with all 100BaseFX fiber, aimed at the government market, where fiber is required for security reasons, Force10 says.
All three switches can be stacked in configurations of as many as eight boxes. With the S50Vs, connections up to 96Gbps of stacking bandwidth can be created among switches in an eight-box stack. (The switches support 288Gbps of switching bandwidth).
The S-Series switches also support the 802.1x protocol for authenticating user devices at the port level. When working with a standards-based RADIUS authentication server, 802.1x enables the switch to act as an authentication gateway for wired or wireless clients connecting to the network.
The new S-Series switches are tweaked versions of Force10’s previously released S50 switch for data centers. While Force10 is entering a crowded and largely commoditized LAN edge switch market – the S50V competes with switches such as Cisco’s Catalyst 3500 and 3700 series, as well as 3Com’s SuperStack, Nortel’s BayStack 5000, Foundry Networks’ FastIron 600 and Extreme Networks’ Summit 400 series switches – the company says its customers have been clamoring for such a box from the vendor.
At Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind., 40 of the stackable switches are deployed in 12 wiring closets across the department of computer science’s newly opened building. A Force10 E300 switch serves as the core switch for the department’s network and connects to wiring closets via 10G Ethernet.
“There’s a common perception [about] Force10 that they’re really just a data-center [switch maker],” says Tim Korb, assistant head of Purdue’s computer science department. The high switching capacity on the stackable boxes provides enough bandwidth for student, faculty and research projects, such as data mining and geometric modeling.
The Force10 S50V starts at around $9,000 and the S25 costs $10,000. Pricing for both switches excludes the cost of 10G Ethernet uplinks modules, which can range from $2,000 to $5,000 per port.
