Foundry Networks Unveils Global Ethernet Technology and Bandwidth Provisioning for Extended Metropolitan Area Network and Co-Location Facility Deployments

Business Wire, Sept 26, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NetWorld Interop Atlanta 2000

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 26, 2000

IronWare 7.1 Software Upgrade for BigIron Layer 3 Switches

Introduces Significant Features for Next-Generation

Communication Service Providers

Foundry Networks(TM), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a leader in high-performance, end-to-end switching and routing solutions, today announced IronWare(TM) release 7.1 software adding Global Ethernet and Bandwidth Management capability to the BigIron(TM) Layer 3 switch family of products. With Global Ethernet, BigIron Layer 3 switches provide significant improvements and benefits to Metropolitan and Wide Area Network service providers by enabling them to offer a richer set of services, including Virtual Private Networking (VPN) and expansive Metropolitan Area Networking (MAN) capabilities such as multi-tenant Ethernet services and virtual co-location facilities. The IronWare 7.1 software release includes the following features:

-- Global Ethernet

-- Up to 16 Million Super-Aggregated VLANs for Virtual Private Metropolitan
Networks

-- Fixed and Adaptive Bandwidth Control and Rate Limiting Services

-- New Security Features for Protection Against Denial of Service Attacks

-- Expanded 4,096 Wire-Speed Access Control Lists (ACLs)

-- Full Network Address Translation (NAT)

-- Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) Enhancements

-- Dynamic Trunk Group Control

-- Security Enhancements

-- VLAN-based Access Control

-- Authorization and Accounting Support for RADIUS and TACACS 

-- RSA Authentication for Secure Shell (SSH)

-- Secure Copy (SCP) Support

"We continue to offer Metropolitan and regional service providers, co-location facility providers and enterprises new capabilities on their Foundry products," said Bobby Johnson, president and CEO of Foundry Networks. "These added features will enable service providers to enhance their ability to expand their services, as well as differentiate themselves through extended bandwidth control, secure private networking, and MAN services on either switched or routed infrastructures using long-haul Gigabit Ethernet or SONET technologies."

Global Ethernet

Foundry's new Global Ethernet technology delivers native broadband Ethernet solutions to local, Metropolitan, regional and global networks. It is suitable for providing virtual co-location facilities, multi-tenant building and campus network connectivity, as well as Ethernet-based services on multi-continental, global networks. Based on Foundry's unique Layer 2 Packet Over SONET (POS) implementation, which combines the simplicity and robustness of Ethernet with the fault protection and high-availability of SONET technology, this innovative technology enables incumbent carriers as well as service providers to offer scalable high-speed secure virtual private networks services based on their SONET infrastructure investment.

Foundry is providing a complete Global Ethernet solution by leveraging its expansive and highly flexible service provisioning, bandwidth management, Quality of Service (QoS), accounting and billing services.

Service providers can take advantage of Foundry's Rate Limiting and Rate Shaping capabilities to provision bandwidth on demand from 256 Kbps to 10 Gigabits. Service providers can ensure service quality using QoS features such as high-speed packet classification, packet prioritization, priority mapping and priority enforcement. Foundry's flexible QoS features enable the delivery of high-priority traffic throughout the Global Ethernet infrastructure.

Global Ethernet includes IP accounting and billing capabilities to enable service providers to charge their customers based on actual application and bandwidth usage.

Global Ethernet offers VLAN security by creating separate broadcast domains while allowing customer virtual networks to share a common backbone infrastructure. Included with this offering is Foundry's famed IronShield(TM) Denial of Service protection, which allows service providers and carriers to protect customer networks from malicious TCP-SYN or ICMP attacks.

Super VLAN Aggregation

Switched networking infrastructures built using VLANs are easier to deploy but simplification introduces capability and scalability limitations. Foundry removes these restrictions through the introduction of the Super VLAN Aggregation feature. Metropolitan service providers can extend their MAN deployment by creating private network tunnels within their networking infrastructure to provide virtual private network services scaling up to 16,000,000 VLANs. In addition, Super VLAN Aggregation allows network administrators to enable and enforce customer specific quality of QoS with Foundry's IP packet filtering and wire-speed Access Control List (ACL) capabilities.

Fixed and Adaptive Bandwidth Provisioning and Rate Limiting Capabilities

Foundry's Bandwidth Provisioning and Rate Limiting capabilities allow network administrators a significant degree of flexibility to meter and control customer bandwidth usage. Using the usage statistics gathered and controlled by the IronCore(TM) ASICs, the BigIron Layer 3 switch can limit the input and output transmission rate on individual ports, trunk groups, virtual interfaces, traffic flows and VLANs.