FORCE10 NETWORKS SHIPS HIGHEST PERFORMANCE ETHERNET SWITCH/ROUTER

Milpitas, CA – Force10 Networks, Inc., the leading developer of high performance Ethernet systems, today announced the Force10 E-Series™, the most scalable and highest performing Ethernet switch/routers in the industry. The E-Series provides unmatched scalability, line-rate performance, and full L2 switching and L3 routing functionality for high-performance Ethernet applications. The E-Series has been selected by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) (both part of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid Project), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the London Internet Exchange (LINX). Based on the Force10 EtherScale™ architecture, which includes six custom ASICs, the E-Series platforms support up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet (GE) or 28 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) per chassis, enabling unprecedented network scalability. The EtherScale ASICs deliver non-blocking, line-rate forwarding across all ports, even with access control lists (ACLs) or QoS applied. The Force10 FTOS™ software delivers full functionality L2 switching and L3 routing. The Tolly Group has performance tested the E-Series and the results are available from The Tolly Group website: www.tolly.com (see news release issued today: “Tolly Group Verifies Line-Rate Performance Of 10 Gigabit Ethernet On The Force10 E1200 Switch/Router”). “Our focus from the very beginning was to build a scalable, high performance Ethernet system for leading-edge customers,” said P.K. Dubey, president and CEO of Force10. “By winning customers across many enterprise application areas, we are well positioned for continued success.” High Performance Ethernet Required In Many Applications The Force10 E-Series’ high-density Ethernet connectivity, line-rate forwarding and full function L2/L3 software are optimized for several demanding applications. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is an early customer of Force10 that required line-rate 10G Ethernet performance to support its research applications. “We have researchers developing applications that need 10 Gigabit Ethernet now, and Force10 has proven that they can deliver line-rate 10G Ethernet,” said Mike Bennett, deputy LBLnet services group leader at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. “When we hosted a public demonstration of 10G Ethernet in July, Force10 delivered full line-rate performance with a real scientific application.” Research institutions such as NCSA (at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and SDSC are driving the creation of the next IT revolution: grid computing. Ultimately computational grids will allow users to access enormous ‘virtual supercomputers’ – computers at different locations linked together to work as one – that will provide CPU cycles on demand. The NSF TeraGrid project will initially use a dedicated 40Gbps wide area “backplane” to connect computers, storage facilities, visualization systems and applications at NCSA, SDSC and other TeraGrid sites to create the largest, most comprehensive grid computing environment for open scientific research in the United States. Clusters that are connected over this grid are being built using 10GE interconnections between Gigabit Ethernet-attached Linux server clusters. The E-Series has the density and non-blocking performance needed to interconnect thousands of servers, and the L3 robustness to provide scalable, controlled access to them. “We chose Force10 because of its unmatched scalability and performance,” said Kevin Walsh, senior network engineer at SDSC. “Our requirements are demanding, since we are today aggregating hundreds and in the future thousands of Gigabit Ethernet-attached Linux servers. Force10 is the only vendor we’ve seen that can meet the challenge and scale with us.” LINX, as most Internet Exchanges (IX), continues to see Internet traffic doubling every 18 months. IXs are turning to 10G Ethernet for connections within and between exchange points to keep up with ever increasing demands for customer connections at GE and beyond. “With an ever increasing amount of peering between the ISPs in Europe, a network such as LINX needs a high-speed backbone, and a high edge-port density,” said Mike Hughes, network architect at LINX. “The E1200 is raising the game, with 10GigE at the core, and unrivalled GigE density for the edge, all in one box.” E-Series: A Breakthrough in Scalability and High Performance Ethernet The E-Series family, consisting of the E1200 and E600, offers the highest density Gigabit Ethernet and 10G Ethernet in the industry today. The E1200 can support up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet and up to 28 ports of 10G Ethernet through its 14 line-card slots, 1.2 Tbps non-blocking switch fabric, and 40Gbps bandwidth per line-card slot. The high availability design of the E1200 includes redundant route processor modules (RPMs), redundant switch fabric modules (SFMs), redundant power and hot-swap of all key components. The E600, which is half the density of the E1200, uses the same line cards, SFMs, RPMs, and FTOS software, which simplifies network operation and maintenance. Pricing and Availability The shipping E-Series line cards support the following interfaces: * 10 Gigabit Ethernet, both single and dual port, LAN and WAN PHY * Gigabit Ethernet, 12 and 24 port versions (SX, LX, ZX) * Packet over SONET/SDH, including 2 port OC-48c / STM-16 and 12 port OC-12c/3c / STM-4/1 Pricing for 10G Ethernet starts at $55,000 per port, and Gigabit Ethernet starts at $2,200 per port. The E1200 chassis, including the RPMs and SFMs, is priced at $95,000, and a similar configuration for the E600 is priced at $50,000.