Force10 Networks' ExaScale line cards incorporate pluggable transceiver modules

Dec. 8, 2009

DECEMBER 8, 2009 -- The 10-port 10GbE line card and 50-port GbE line card for the ExaScale E1200 and the midsized ExaScale E600 chassis are designed to facilitate greater density in support of a broader range of applications, such as WANs, long-haul optical networks, and data center and cloud computing environments.

DECEMBER 8, 2009 -- Force10 Networks has added two new line-rate 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and GbE line cards for use within its ExaScale virtualized core switch/routers that incorporate flexible pluggable transceiver modules. The 10-port 10GbE line card and 50-port GbE line card for the ExaScale E1200 and the midsized ExaScale E600 chassis are designed to facilitate greater density in support of a broader range of applications, such as wide area networks (WANs), long-haul optical networks, and data center and cloud computing environments.

This is the second recent upgrade to the ExaScale, following the announcement of MPLS support.

"In addition to maintaining significant functionality, density, and flexibility along with ongoing investment protection, customers operating virtualized data centers, HPCC, or cloud computing applications need robust solutions that help simplify--not complicate--their respective environments," says Steve Garrison, vice president of marketing, Force10 Networks. "By delivering industry-leading densities, our ExaScale line cards reflect the company's commitment to ensuring our customers maintain the lowest TCO possible, even as they scale and manage their high-performance networks."

In addition to line-rate switching and routing and nonblocking scalability, the Force10 ExaScale switch/router offers support for a 140 line-rate 10GbE ports per chassis and 125-Gbps/slot data capacity. The new ExaScale 10-port 10GbE line card provides support for SR, LR, ER, ZR, and CX4 interfaces using pluggable XFP transceiver modules, making them suited for applications in next-generation data centers as well as WAN and long-haul optical networks. Utilizing XFPs that also incorporate DWDM enables the support of direct, data center-to-data center interconnections over the deployed optical infrastructure using an alien wavelength. This functionality, says Force10, results in simpler, more efficient virtualized data centers and cloud computing networks.

The new ExaScale 50-port GbE line card supports pluggable SFP modules, which provide support for SX, LX, ZX and 1000Base-T interfaces. The line card's high-density design enables the ExaScale switch/router to support up to 700 line-rate GbE SFP ports in a single chassis.

The new line cards are based on the ExaScale suite of packet processing and switching ASICs that utilize patented backplane technology. According to the company, the nonblocking card also significantly cuts ongoing operational expenses by implementing simplified, next-generation management technology, flexible virtualization applications, and open technology.

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