Force10’s latest switch is a first

A switch Force10 Networks introduced this week has been verified by the Tolly Group to be the first terabit Gigabit Ethernet switch/router it has come across.

Yes, as we begin to see switches with hundreds of Gigabit Ethernet or tens of 10 Gig Ethernet ports, it’s time to start thinking in terms of terabits per second and billions of packets per second for total switching capacity.

The Force10 TeraScale E1200 managed 100% line-rate throughput across all of its 672 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 56 ports of 10 Gig. Configured with Gigabit ports, the switch hit 1.34 terabits per second, at all packet sizes tested.

Force10 says its switches’ backplane is capable of scaling to 5T bit/sec and handling interfaces of up to 100G bit/sec.

The switch was able to maintain 100% line-rate, zero-loss throughput while processing a billion packets per second, or handling a million access control lists, or forwarding IPv6 packets.

Processing a million access control lists did not degrade the performance of the switch. IPv6 forwarding was conducted even at Gigabit and 10 Gigabit rates.

Tolly says the switch has the highest port density and throughput of any switch the firm has ever tested. Its tests were commissioned by Force10, and the company is hosting the report at:

https://www.force10networks.com/products/reports.asp

Full details of the new switch are available in a story by my colleague Phil Hochmuth:

https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/091304force10.html