3Com announces next steps for its fast IP product strategy.NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 1997-- Provides Up to a Five-Fold Performance Improvement at One-Tenth the Current Cost of Networking Equipment for Corporate Intranets and Internet Access See how to access the Internet. 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :COMS COMS 3Com Corporation (stock symbol) COMS Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist COMS Continuous Opacity Monitoring Systems COMS City of Manchester Stadium (UK) ) today announced implementation plans for its Fast IP switching Switching TCP/IP packets at high speed. Ipsilon's IP Switch started the trend and various vendors followed suit with different approaches, including Cisco's tag switching and 3Com's Fast IP. The goal was to switch IP packets faster than traditional router-based layer 3 forwarding. solution that enables customers to cost-effectively scale internetwork performance as bandwidth requirements Bandwidth requirements (communications) The channel bandwidths needed to transmit various types of signals, using various processing schemes. Every signal observed in practice can be expressed as a sum (discrete or over a frequency continuum) of sinusoidal increase. Bandwidth-intensive applications running on the Internet and corporate Intranets are a major factor for the increase in network data traffic and change in traditional traffic patterns. Fast IP, an extension of the company's High-Function Switching architecture, addresses these issues and is a significant component of 3Com's Transcend Networking framework for scaling the performance, extending the reach, and managing the growth of enterprise networks. Fast IP provides the high performance of switching with the control of routing. 3Com's approach is to preserve the LAN (Local Area Network) A communications network that serves users within a confined geographical area. The "clients" are the user's workstations typically running Windows, although Mac and Linux clients are also used. router's role in filtering initial session requests between clients and servers in a network, while switching the subsequent packet forwarding Forwarding is the relaying of packets from one network segment to another by nodes in a computer network. The simplest forwarding model - unicasting - involves a packet being relayed from link to link along a chain leading from the packet's source to its destination. to faster LAN switches, improving performance by up to 500 percent. Fast IP is unique among IP switching solutions in that it is initiated by the end system or "desktop" and not a router or switch. Based on several industry standards endorsed by the leading vendors, it is the only IP switching solution that can be implemented across multiple network technologies (Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) Often pronounced "fiddy," it was a LAN and MAN access method that had its heyday in the mid-1990s. FDDI was an ANSI standard token passing network that transmitted 100 Mbps over optical fiber up to 10 kilometers. , Token Ring, and ATM). How Fast IP Works Fast IP is initiated from the end system through a NHRP-based (Next Hop Resolution Protocol Next Hop Resolution Protocol (NHRP) is sometimes used to improve the efficiency of routing computer network traffic over Non-Broadcast, Multiple Access (NBMA) Networks. It is defined in IETF RFC 2332, and further described in RFC 2333. ) request and response technique -- part of 3Com's DynamicAccess technology. This technique is based on source and destination MAC addresses, as well as source and destination IEEE 802.1Q VLAN See virtual LAN. VLAN - Virtual Local Area Network tags. The VLAN assignments, which may often correspond with subnet (SUBNETwork) A logical division of a local area network, which is created to improve performance and provide security. To enhance performance, subnets limit the number of nodes that compete for available bandwidth. assignment or other grouping techniques, are learned by all attached switches via IEEE 802.1p advertisements. This enables LAN switches to provide the same level of broadcast and flooding containment as IP routers. (For more detail, see 3Com white paper posted on 3Com's World Wide Web server at http://www.3com.com/nsc/501310.html .) Once the request is initiated, a router is used to forward the request on to the destination while applying common filter/firewall policies. Upon receipt of the request, the destination system/server responds back to the end system via high-performance switches, not a router. The switches use 802.1Q-based tagging/flooding techniques to reach the destination since it's not locally known. Once the response is received, the end system then uses the high-performance switched path for all subsequent data flows to and from the server, eliminating the dependence on the router for data flow. This technique also interoperates with all of today's existing layer 2 and layer 3 networking devices. "Fast IP is the industry's only IP switching solution that will provide dramatic improvements in throughput while supporting quality of service for next generation applications across all LAN media," said Eric Benhamou, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of 3Com. Partnering with Industry Leaders for End-to-End IP Switching Today 3Com, Cascade Communications, and IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) (see separate release) announced their commitment to work together on the industry's first and only fully interoperable LAN-to-WAN IP switching solution. This will connect Fast IP to more than 70 percent of all corporate data networks with the rapidly emerging public switched Internet. "The announcement made today by these market leaders will provide customers with the industry's only solution for cost-effectively accelerating the performance of corporate networks end-to-end across LANs and the Internet," added Benhamou. Availability for 3Com's Fast IP Solution 3Com's Fast IP solution -- both the client software and software support for its switches -- will be available in the second half of 1997. The new Fast IP client software will be bundled with the more than one million new network interface cards (NICs) shipped each month by 3Com for PCs and servers, and will be available to download from 3Com's home page. The Fast IP client software will be a standard feature of its DynamicAccess software on 3Com NICs. Fast IP will also be a standard feature of 3Com's full range of High-Function and Boundary LAN switches, as well as its NETBuilder routers. 3Com Corporation has helped more than 45 million people gain access to critical information through high-speed networks. Designed to serve large enterprises, service providers, small offices and homes, 3Com products provide a scalable architecture to meet the immediate and long term connectivity needs of today's user. With research and development on three continents, 3Com is one of the data network industry's largest and fastest growing companies. The company's innovative marketing, engineering, sales and support simplify communication, optimize network reliability and protect customer investments. For further information, visit 3Com's World Wide Web site at www.3com.com or call 1-800-NET-3COM. -0- 3Com, NETBuilder and Transcend are registered trademarks and DynamicAccess is a trademark of 3Com Corporation. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. CONTACT: 3Com Public Relations public relations, activities and policies used to create public interest in a person, idea, product, institution, or business establishment. By its nature, public relations is devoted to serving particular interests by presenting them to the public in the most Susan Ursch (508) 264-1486 susan_ursch@3mail.3com.com |
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