Router Accelerator and FDDI
Plaintree Systems announced that it is shipping its Router Accelerator (RA) and FDDI Gigamodules for the company's WaveSwitch 9000 family of gigabit switches.
The Router Accelerator is a Layer 3 switching module that enables local inter-subnet IP traffic to bypass local backbone routers. This frees up router capacity that can be redirected to boosting WAN bandwidth. Up to four RA's can be configured in a WaveSwitch 9200, providing a combined forwarding capacity of 6 million packets per second.
The RA operates with routers which use any routing protocol including RIP, OSPF and (E)IGRP, without requiring reconfiguration of the router, and without complicating the IP address structure of the local network. Layer 3 intelligence in the switch automatically learns the locations of local IP addresses, and that information allows the RA to forward packets directly to local IP destinations. Switch ports do not need to be assigned IP addresses as they would in a router, yet all of the forwarding functions of a router are performed by the RA on a packet-by-packet basis, including decrementing the TTL (time to live) counter, replacing the source MAC address.
The FDDI interface enables organizations to migrate from FDDI to Fast/Gigabit Ethernet at their own pace. Translational bridging between FDDI and Ethernet is accomplished at full wire speed, even when IP Fragmentation (the splitting of FDDI packets into the smaller sized frames required by Ethernet) must be performed on every packet. Additionally, the FDDI module supports Source Route Bridging, providing a big boost in backbone bandwidth for enterprises where multiple Token Ring networks are bridged to a single FDDI ring and sharing its limited 100 Mbps bandwidth.
The FDDI Gigamodule has eight fiber interfaces with dual SC connectors, which can be used as eight SAS ports (Single Attach Station) or paired to provide up to four DAS ports (Dual Attach Station). Both multimode fiber and single mode fiber versions are available, serving distances greater than 14 kilometers.
Plaintree Systems, Phone: 617-965-5811.