* HP’s ProCurve Routing Switch 9408sl
HP this week unveiled a high-end LAN switch designed to deliver high bandwidth to a network core, many high-speed connections to desktops, or both.
The ProCurve Routing Switch 9408sl will support up to 32 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 480 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 320 mini-GBICs across its eight module slots.
HP claims the switch has a throughput of up to 480 million packets per second (with 64-byte packets) and a routing and switching capacity of 1.28 terabits per second.
Interestingly, IPv6 is supported in the hardware of the Layer 3 switch, so HP can claim wirespeed routing and switching with both IPv4 and IPv6.
HP has brought many other features to the switch. For instance, the 9408sl can do “policy-based routing,” where network usage is controlled through access control lists. Traffic flows can be prioritized based on port, virtual LAN, source MAC, ACL, 802.1p, type-of-service bits, or DiffServ settings.
Redundancy is part of the offering as well – the switch has the ability to automatically fail over to another switch, an optional redundant power supply and optional redundant management modules.
As you can imagine, this is not a small device, but it’s not that big, either; it’s 15U high and weighs 242 pounds, fully loaded.
The switch was introduced as part of a larger announcement of management software, which my colleague Denise Dubie wrote about here: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/060605-hp-openview.html
The switch is expected to ship in August. Pricing starts at $310,000 for a configuration with 20 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet.
