Extreme Networks, the leader in open converged networks, today announced that it was selected by France Televisions Publicite, a subsidiary of the France Television Group and composed of the publicly-owned channels France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5 and France O, which represent the foundation of its growth and make it the number one audio-visual group in the region, to implement a 10 Gigabit high-speed switching solution for the continued development of its LAN to support high-definition programming. France Televisions Publicite, responsible for marketing and broadcasting advertising slots for the France Television Group and a number of other specialized channels, has selected Extreme Networks BlackDiamond 8810 switch to implement a secure and redundant 10 Gigabit network. To complement the highly available core, Extreme Networks' Summit 400 switches will be used at the edge of the network where they provide 10 Gigabit uplinks and high availability features. This capacity upgrade along with intelligent networking features will support France Televisions Publicite's growing requirements for video broadcasting. "As France Televisions Publicite is strongly committed to furthering High-Definition Television in France, we needed to upgrade our existing 622-Mbps ATM architecture to a scalable and secure 10 Gigabit architecture, which is why we chose the Extreme Networks solution following research and comparative studies," said Christophe Scherer, IT and technical director of the advertising sales division. "The BlackDiamond 8810 platform also gives France Public Television the much-needed ability to match the growth of our business." "This new customer demonstrates Extreme's ability to successfully provide switches that are well-suited to handle complex multicast and video networks," said Rob Pronk, EMEA regional vice-president for Extreme Networks. "The smooth delivery of such media content requires increased Quality of Service and solid network availability that we have made standard on our family of networking solutions." In addition to increased bandwidth, France Televisions Publicite is also taking advantage of improved network resources to support numerous internal applications while connecting its master control room to the network. This required a network infrastructure that provides maximum availability, support for latency-sensitive applications, strong security and a complete management solution, available with Extreme Networks' innovative network operating system, ExtremeWare XOS.