Brookhaven National Labs picks Force10 Networks to power research and LAN
JUNE 30, 2009 -� Force10 Networks (search Lightwave for Force10 Networks), which builds and secures intelligent services networks, today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Labs has selected the ExaScale family of virtualized switch/routers to help power its network.
"For more than 60 years, the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has been pushing the boundaries of numerous scientific disciplines, and that has always required cutting-edge research tools," says Vincent Bonafede, manager of the Network Operations Group for Brookhaven Lab. "To explore new frontiers of science, it is important to use a next-generation, high-performance network with ultrahigh, nonblocking throughput like the ExaScale E-Series."
The switch/router utilizes third-generation Force10 technology that incorporates patent-protected technologies to deliver nonblocking line-rate Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10GbE densities. With support for 140 line-rate 10GbE SFP+ ports per chassis, the company says its E-Series is the only switch/router with 100 Gbps of usable data capacity per slot today. The E1200 delivers a total throughput of more than 2 billion packets per second across a switching fabric capacity of up to 3.5 Tbps or 250 Gbps full duplex per slot.
"Brookhaven Lab is a key player in such international research projects as the lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Switzerland," says Frank Burstein, senior network engineer at Brookhaven. "We need a nonstop reliable network with the density and performance characteristics required to operate under extreme load. Force10 fits our needs with its high-availability platforms, which offer high performance at full load even with full Layer 3 applications implemented. Force10 also provides us with a 100-Gbps-ready platform for the future of our scientific research, which was an important consideration in our choosing it."
"In conjunction with the needs of our scientific research we also had to address a high-performance core networking requirement for our campus LAN," Burstein adds. "Stability, density, and performance are instrumental in order to keep our network available for day-to-day operations. This core must be fully interoperable with industry standards and our existing installed network equipment. The easy management and configuration of the Force10 products is attributable to a simple command line management structure familiar to us. Implementing the Force10 operating system was also easy and helps simplify building networks and existing systems in a multivendor environment."
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