Allied Telesyn churns out LAN switches

Allied Telesyn added to its line of low-cost LAN switches recently with stackable and chassis-based Ethernet gear.

The SB4000 series introduced this week is intended for LAN backbones, and Allied Telesyn says it’s intended to go up against major players like Cisco, Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks.

The SB4000 Layer 3 switch comes in four- and eight-slot chassis. The four-slot model can support up to 192 ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet or 32 ports of Gigabit Ethernet. The eight-slot model can support twice as many ports in each category.

Allied Telesyn claims the switches can route IP and IPX traffic at wirespeed on all ports. They also have quality-of-service mechanisms, support for load balancing and link aggregation, security features and support for various routing protocols.

The four-slot and eight-slot chassis cost $2,300 and $3,000, respectively, while line cards range from $2,500 for an eight-port copper Gigabit Ethernet card to $7,500 for a switch controller card. Some of the components are available now, while others will ship next month.

Allied Telesyn last week added to its 8000 line of Layer 2 managed stackable switches. The company touted the switches’ flexibility, as each has two expansion bays in addition to the fixed switch ports.

One switch, the AT-8024M, has 24 fixed ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet. The other, the AT-8016F, has 16 fixed ports of fiber-optic Fast Ethernet.

The expansion bays can be filled with copper or fiber Gigabit Ethernet modules, stacking modules or fiber Fast Ethernet modules.

The AT-8024M costs $850, while the AT-8016F costs $1,500. Both are available now.