Foundry packs more power

Foundry Networks Inc. recently introduced three new high-end products with

the goal of increasing the performance and manageability of busy data networks.

"The net impact here is better performance and more redundancy with

less boxes," said Guy Warren, regional federal manager at Foundry. The Navy,

Army, Air Force, NASA and the U.S. Mint are all current Foundry customers.

Among the new products is the NetIron 1500, a 15-slot, carrier-class

Internet backbone router that has 480 gigabits/sec of total switching capacity

and up to 172 million packets/sec of forwarding performance. Prices start

at $34,495.

The new ServerIron 400 and ServerIron 800 switches now include Foundry's

Internet IronWare software suite and a new World Wide Web switching management

technology. The new line is capable of sustaining forwarding throughputs

of up to 56 gigabits/sec, while supporting 16 million concurrent Web sessions.

"The ServerIron meets three [important] application requirements: firewall

load balancing, server load balancing and transparent cache switching,"

Warren said. The ServerIron 400 starts at $24,995, the 800 model at $29,995.

Lastly, the new BigIron 1500, a 15-slot LAN backbone switch, delivers

480 gigabits/sec of total switching capacity and supports up to 120 gigabit

and 352 10/100 megabit/sec Ethernet ports. Prices start at $17,495. All

the products will begin shipping this summer.