FORE Systems this week will ship the first manifestation of its hybrid ATM-Ethernet switch, code-named Hydra.
The switch, called the ESX-3000, has eight slots that users can fill with ATM or Ethernet cards. The switch can hold up to 128 ports of OC-3 (155M bit/sec) ATM or 32 ports of OC-12 (622M bit/sec) ATM. Ethernet cards will ship in the third quarter of this year, providing up to 192 ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet in the switch.
The ESX-3000 comes with either a 10G bit/sec or 20G bit/sec backplane and is ready for OC-48 (2.5G bit/sec) ATM connections, FORE says.
The product can maintain high speeds because it puts the segmentation and reassembly (SAR) function in hardware, according to FORE. The SAR chips translate Ethernet frames into ATM cells and back again. Each card has its own SAR chips.
FORE also introduced a software agent for its ESX line of switches that is intended to optimize SAP R/3 traffic through the switch. The agent, called ERP Express, makes sure that traffic associated with enterprise resource planning gets through in a timely manner. FORE will introduce similar agents in the future for other types of traffic, such as voice that uses the ITU H.323 standard.
The ESX-3000 is available now with ATM ports and starts at $20,995 for the 20G bit/sec version. ERP Express will ship in the third quarter for the ESX-2400 and ESX-4800, costing $10,995. A future release will be designed for the ESX-3000.
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