Force10 Networks Powers and Protects High Performance Network

Force10 Networks today announced that the TeraScale E-Series family of switch/routers and the P-Series family of security appliances are powering and securing SCinet, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet high performance network at the Supercomputing 06 (SC06) conference. As the industry’s highest density 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch and only line-rate 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) security appliance, the Force10 TeraScale E1200 and P10 provide the high performance capacity and monitoring to connect scientists on the show floor to networks around the world. “Since its inception, Force10 has collaborated with the research and education communities to develop leading edge technologies that meet the pressing needs of the world’s highest performance networks,” said Debbie Montano, director of research and education alliances at Force10 Networks and the chair of the Bandwidth Challenge at SC06. “From this collaboration we designed the highly resilient TeraScale E-Series that provides the capacity to leverage powerful computing clusters as well as the P-Series to secure those high performance networks.” The Force10 TeraScale E-Series will support 44 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports to build out the foundation of the show’s high performance network. In addition to providing 10 Gigabit Ethernet access to various booths and organizations on the show floor, the TeraScale E-Series will also be used for the Bandwidth Challenge, during which organizations will demonstrate full utilization of 10 Gigabit Ethernet links between the show floor and their facilities. The Force10 TeraScale E-Series will also run both IPv4 and IPv6 in the network this year to ensure seamless interconnection with international research and educational organizations, particularly those in Asia. As the foundation of the future information society, IPv6 enables ubiquitous networks with improved security, quality of service and mobility to deliver online access anywhere at anytime. The TeraScale E-Series delivers zero packet loss throughput across 672 line-rate Gigabit and 56 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports while processing IPv6 packets, delivering the next generation address space capability service providers and enterprises throughout Asia as well as the U.S. government require. At last year’s conference, Force10 announced that it had acquired MetaNetworks, a privately held network security company. Leveraging the patent pending technology it acquired, Force10 introduced the P-Series, the industry’s only security appliance that can inspect, monitor and protect the network at line-rate 10 Gbps. While the P-Series is monitoring the 10 Gigabit Ethernet show network, Force10 will also be demonstrating its line-rate 10 Gbps firewall capabilities in booth 1539. Livio Ricciulli, Force10’s chief security scientist, will also be discussing the challenges of securing a high speed wide area network during his presentation “High Speed Firewalls: Securing the 10 Gigabit Ethernet WAN” on Thursday, Nov. 16, at 10:30 a.m. SCinet is the most advanced technology network built on site to enable world class demonstrations and support the annual SC conference. SCinet features a high-performance production-quality network with direct wide area connectivity to many national and worldwide networks through peering relationships with principle networks. Additionally, SCinet will provide the foundation for conference programs, including SC Global, the HPC Bandwidth Challenge and the HPC Analytics Challenge.