ACADEMIA

Foundry Networks today announced the NetIron MLX Series of ultra-high-performance MPLS-enabled switching routers, and the general availability of the NetIron XMR Series of high-end Internet and MPLS backbone routers. Foundry is pleased with the high-level of interest and acceptance of the NetIron XMR Series, initially announced in June 2005. The NetIron MLX Series of switching routers offers a unique combination of advanced service delivery capabilities, high-versatility, superior port density, and increased traffic capacity. The state-of-the-art Clos fabric architecture, in the NetIron MLX Series, offers capacity of up to 3.84 Terabits per second (Tbps). It utilizes a unified, scalable architecture with common management and interface modules for advanced wire-speed service delivery, while controlling sparing costs. The NetIron MLX routers are available in three chassis sizes to fit a wide range of network deployment demands. -- NetIron MLX-4: a 4 RU, 4-slot system with up to 16 10-GE ports -- NetIron MLX-8: a 7 RU, 8-slot system with up to 32 10-GE ports -- NetIron MLX-16: a 14 RU, 16-slot system with up to 64 10-GE ports For high-performance metro applications, the NetIron MLX Series enables advanced Layer 2 Metro Ethernet services based on IEEE 802.1Q, Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP), Foundry's proprietary Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), and Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP). The switching router offers unique scalability for Layer 2 Metro applications with a capacity of up to 1 Million MAC addresses per system. It also features highly scalable metro services based on the upcoming IEEE 802.1ad (Provider Bridges) and IEEE 802.1ah (Provider Backbone Bridges). To complement Layer 2 Metro services, the NetIron MLX series offers a powerful suite of MPLS capabilities and services, including MPLS-TE, Fast Reroute (FRR), MPLS Virtual Leased Line (VLL), Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), and BGP/MPLS VPNs (RFC 2547bis). This unique combination of advanced services allows operators to combine the simplicity and cost-efficiency of Layer 2 with the granular control and high-availability of MPLS. The NetIron MLX Series also possesses carrier class hardware redundancy and non-stop operational features, including hitless management failover and hitless OS upgrades, allowing operators to build scalable and highly available networks. A unique suite of quality of service (QoS) capabilities augmented by powerful accounting, billing, and Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) further enables service providers to drive revenue through tight service level agreements (SLA), and incremental services. "Based on our recent service provider studies, we see an intertwining of MPLS and Ethernet -- most providers of metro services are using or planning MPLS as a standard approach for augmenting and scaling their Layer 2 services," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder of Infonetics Research. "A cost-effective solution that has a mix of Layer 2, routing, and MPLS capabilities will help give these service providers the flexibility to expand their customer reach and increase revenue." For Internet edge aggregation and routing, the NetIron MLX Series also includes Foundry's cutting edge advanced hardware based Layer 3 routing technology, Foundry Direct Routing (FDR). FDR offers operators secure and robust routing with dual stack IPv4/IPv6 wire-speed routing performance. The NetIron MLX switching routers offer capacities up to 512,000 IPv4 routes in the hardware Forwarding Information Base (FIB), and up to 2 Million BGP routes in the BGP Routing Information Base (RIB), thereby, enabling high performance, scalable, and cost effective Internet edge/aggregation deployments. The NetIron MLX Series is also a powerful enabler of advanced converged enterprise backbones. Featuring state-of-the-art QoS, wire-speed unicast, and multicast routing for IPv4 and IPv6, the NetIron MLX Series routers efficiently enable the rollout of converged backbones providing reliable transport of Voice over IP (VoIP), video services, and mission critical data. Virtual routing via Multi-VRF allows enterprises to create multiple security zones and simplified VPNs for the different applications and business units, while streamlining the overall network management. For large-scale high-performance cluster computing, the state-of-the-art Clos switch fabric architecture in the NetIron MLX Series provides ample capacity for bandwidth intensive applications. By offering superior data capacity and ultra-low latency below 10 microseconds, the NetIron MLX Series accelerates application performance in high-performance computing clusters used in many applications today like advanced simulation, motion picture special effects, and large-scale data acquisition in physics research establishments. NetIron XMR Series Ships for Revenue Foundry Networks announces the general availability and initial revenue shipments of the NetIron XMR Series of high-end Internet and Metro routers. The NetIron XMR Series is built for large-scale service provider deployments; it offers a superior blend of high-scalability, high-performance IPv4/IPv6 routing, MPLS, and MPLS VPN capabilities, at a fraction of the cost of competing routers. It delivers 10-GE at a significantly lower price-point than other routing vendors' 10-GE and OC-192 solutions. Today, service providers face the challenge of meeting the increasing demands for new and scalable services; adding to this challenge is an exponential traffic growth trend that continues to erode service provider network capacities. The NetIron XMR Series of routers are designed to successfully address these hurdles. It features Foundry's cutting-edge 5th generation Network Processor based architecture, which offers operators a rich mix of services including dual stack wire-speed IPv4/IPv6 routing, and the high-value MPLS Virtual Leased Line (VLL), Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS), and BGP/MPLS VPN (RFC 2547bis) services. The Foundry architecture enables customers to mix these services on the same platform while offering intelligent mapping of user frames to each service instance, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional routers. The NetIron XMR Series is comprised of three system configurations to address the port density and traffic handling capacity needs of different providers. In addition, the NetIron XMR Series boasts industry leading routing capacities of up to 1 Million IPv4 routes in the hardware Forwarding Information Base (FIB), and up to 10 Million BGP routes in the BGP Routing Information Base (RIB), thereby enabling large scale BGP peering configurations, large backbone deployments, and IP carriers' carrier deployments. To address the operator's need for increasing network up time and availability, the NetIron XMR Series routers offer a highly resilient hardware architecture featuring redundant management modules, switch fabrics, power supplies, and cooling systems. "Foundry's NetIron MLX and XMR routers deliver innovation in performance, scalability, and feature-sets that are all critical to our rapidly growing business," said Nathan Raciborski, co-founder and CTO of Limelight Networks. "Foundry's routers are a key component in our ability to be the most scalable and highest performance content delivery network for digital media." Both the NetIron XMR Series and NetIron MLX Series are powered by Foundry's innovative Multi-Service IronWare Operating System, which is designed for high-availability and security. The Multi-Service IronWare OS features a multi-threaded distributed design and non-stop operation through hitless management/fabric failover with graceful degradation, hitless (in-service) operating system upgrades, rapid routing convergence, and MPLS Fast Reroute capabilities. The new NetIron routers also offer operators a rich set of hardware based tools for securing their networks including industry leading wire-speed access control list (ACL) scalability, Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding (Unicast RPF), and platform Receive ACLs (rACLs) for protecting end-users as well as the networking infrastructure against rampant attacks through the Internet. "Foundry's NetIron XMR Internet routers and NetIron MLX switching routers deliver reliability, performance, scalability, and robust routing protocol support required by global service providers and high-end computing environments," said Bobby Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Foundry Networks. "Foundry's portfolio of service provider and enterprise solutions enable customers to build first class networks with superior service availability and exceptional return on investment." Pricing and Availability The NetIron XMR Series of routers is generally available today, with prices starting at $60,000 (US List) for a redundant NetIron XMR 16000 base system -- redundant management modules, switch fabrics, power supplies, and cooling system. The NetIron XMR Series also offers IPv4/IPv6/MPLS multi-service capable 10-GE at an attractive $7,500 per port price point. The NetIron MLX Series will be generally available in February 2006 with prices starting at $30,500 (US List) for a redundant NetIron MLX-4 base system -- redundant management modules, switch fabrics, power supplies, and cooling system. The NetIron MLX Series offers advanced Layer 2 and IPv4/IPv6/MPLS capable 10-GE for $5,000 per port.