Acacia unveils Gigabit Ethernet for its NovaSwitch family of 10/100/1000 stackable LAN switches.LOWELL, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 14, 1997-- Industry's only programmable LAN switch A network device that cross-connects clients, servers and network devices. Also known as a "frame switch," stand-alone LAN switches are common in all Ethernet networks. A four-port switch is also typically built into a wired or wireless router for homes and small business (see wireless combines high-bandwidth stacking with Gigabit Ethernet An Ethernet standard that transmits at 1 Gbps. Used mostly to connect high-end workstations and servers as well as for network backbones, Gigabit Ethernet transmits full duplex from point to point using switches and half duplex in a shared environment (CSMA/CD) using a hub. for wide-scale deployment of gigabit-speed networking Acacia Networks today added Gigabit Ethernet to its award-winning NovaSwitch(TM) family of high-bandwidth, stackable and programmable 10/100/1000 LAN switches. The company announced the NovaSwitch 10000gx Gigabit Ethernet switch, and the GigaLink(TM) 1000 Gigabit Ethernet module for the NovaSwitch product line. With the addition of these Gigabit Ethernet products, Acacia offers customers the fullest solution set available for interconnecting LAN switches, high-speed servers and enterprise backbones at gigabit-per-second speeds. Acacia is the only switch vendor to offer both Gigabit Ethernet and fully-meshed, gigabit-speed stacking to deliver the most flexible and extensible switching system at the lowest cost of ownership. Acacia's unique stacking capability, dubbed GigaPlane(TM), is used by customers to achieve high concentrations of switched 10/100 Mbps ports in the wiring closet The central distribution or servicing point for cables in a network. See MDF and wire center. and workgroup. The new Gigabit Ethernet offerings, the stackable NovaSwitch 10000gx and GigaLink 1000, are used for high-speed connections to servers and 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. backbone, as well as between NovaSwitch stacks. This combination of gigabit-speed stacking and Gigabit Ethernet costs as little as one third of recently announced schemes that plan to use Gigabit Ethernet for a stacking interconnect. "Acacia distinguishes themselves from the crowd of Gigabit players with their broad range of 10/100 switching products and unique gigabit-bandwidth stack interconnect," said Nick Lippis, president of Strategic Networks Consulting, Inc. "With the announcement of GigaLink for the NovaSwitch line and the 10000gx, they also offer Gigabit Ethernet links between stacks and for connections to the backbone through and through; thoroughly; entirely. - Lord Lytton. See also: Backbone and high-speed servers. This stackable approach to switched networks both lowers the barrier to entry and scales up 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 grow." NovaSwitch product line evolution - from Megabits to Gigabits The NovaSwitch family includes the 1600ex and 2400ex workgroup switches, the 12000LX segment switch, and the new 10000gx Gigabit Ethernet switch. NovaSwitches offer customers maximum network performance with the ability to scale from "Megabits to Gigabits(TM)" speed through all levels of their architecture - from the switch, to the GigaPlane(TM) meshed stacking interconnect, and a range of high-speed uplinks including Gigabit Ethernet. The powerful DSP (1) (Digital Signal Processor) A special-purpose CPU used for digital signal processing applications (see definition #2 below). It provides ultra-fast instruction sequences, such as shift and add, and multiply and add, which are commonly used in math-intensive (Digital Signal Processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time computing. Characteristics of typical Digital Signal Processors
See also: Switching of the NovaSwitch delivers 2.56 Gbps within each switch and 3.4 Gbps of non-blocked stacking bandwidth between switches. In aggregate, the stacked NovaSwitch system delivers up to 9Gbps of aggregate system bandwidth and switches up to 5 million packets per second. The new NovaSwitch 10000gx provides 10 switched, autosensing 10/100 Mbps ports plus one 1000Base-SX Gigabit Ethernet port. Four 10000gx switches can be stacked to support up to 38 10/100Mbps ports, and up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports. The company will be demonstrating its new Gigabit Ethernet products at the Networld + Interop trade show in Las Vegas Las Vegas (läs vā`gəs), city (1990 pop. 258,295), seat of Clark co., S Nev.; inc. 1911. It is the largest city in Nevada and the center of one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the United States. , beginning on May 5 (Booth 4759). True stacking versus "heapables" Stackable products revolutionized the hub market when they were introduced, rapidly overtaking the sales of chassis and standalone hubs. Acacia pioneered true high-speed stacking in the LAN switch market with the introduction of NovaSwitch and GigaPlane one year ago. While many vendors claim the ability to stack their switches, they accomplish this merely by daisy chaining or "heaping" switches with 100 Mbps pipes. Acacia, on the other hand, is the only company offering true, 3.4 gigabit-per second stacking with its GigaPlane interconnect. High-bandwidth stacking is now a requirement for interconnecting the growing concentrations of 100Mbps segments in customers' wiring closets and workgroups. Recently launched Gigabit Ethernet companies offer daisy-chained switch interconnection, but these systems consume costly and precious Gigabit Ethernet pipes for stacking. By contrast, Acacia uses its 3.4Gbps GigaPlane between switches, leaving all of its GigaLink Gigabit Ethernet pipes for connections between stacks, and for backbone and server connections. Gigaplane stacking also costs as little as one third to one half of daisy-chained Gigabit Ethernet pipes. In a stack of switches providing 30-40 ports of Fast Ethernet An earlier name for 100Mbps Ethernet. See 100Base-T. (networking) Fast Ethernet - A version of Ethernet developed in the 1990s(?) which can carry 100 Mbps compared with standard Ethernet's 10 Mbps. It requires upgraded network cards and hubs. , Acacia's solution cost $6,000 to stack versus $18,000-$24,000 using daisy-chained Gigabit Ethernet, while providing two to four times the performance. Programmability keeps NovaSwitch current and compliant NovaSwitch has the only programmable switch core in the industry, allowing the switches to be field upgraded via software download with new features and brought into compliance with industry standards as they are solidified. This applies to Multilayer Switching, VLANs, QoS and Gigabit Ethernet. As the IEEE 802.3z (networking, standard) IEEE 802.3z - The IEEE committee working on standards for Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabit Ethernet standard is finalized, NovaSwitch customers will receive free software upgrades to allow their base switches to fully support the standard. In this way, customers gain unmatched investment protection along with the confidence to deploy new capabilities when they first become available. "I chose Acacia's NovaSwitch because its flexibility allowed me to design my network in two phases," said Randy McRae, microcomputer systems engineer for Virginia Beach Virginia Beach, resort city (1990 pop. 393,069), independent and in no county, SE Va., on the Atlantic coast; inc. 1906. In 1963, Princess Anne co. and the former small town of Virginia Beach were merged, giving the present city an area of 302 sq mi (782 sq km). , Va., Police Department. "During the first phase what I needed most was high-speed switching with room to grow, plus the freedom to defer some decisions until later. Acacia's stackability and programmability allowed me do just that. Now that I'm planning for Phase 2, I see that I need to locate my database systems in two separate locations. I will be using Acacia's Gigabit Ethernet uplink to tie these two locations together." "Acacia was founded by bringing a new technology to the LAN switching
LAN switching is a form of packet switching used in local area networks. Switching technologies are crucial to network design, or to that minority of LANs that are used outside the home. market - powerful, programmable DSPs. From the start, we knew the technology had the legs to go from 10Mbps to 100Mbps and Gigabit-level switching. With this announcement of GigaLink and the 10000gx, we are executing on the promise of the technology by bringing unmatched performance and flexibility to our customers," said Jeff Low, vice president of marketing for Acacia Networks. Pricing and availability The GigaLink 1000SX Gigabit Ethernet module is IEEE 802.3z compatible to the current state of the standard and is offered at $2,995. This module supports short wavelength fiber optics fiber optics, transmission of digitized messages or information by light pulses along hair-thin glass fibers. Each fiber is surrounded by a cladding having a high index of refractance so that the light is internally reflected and travels the length of the fiber for up to 300 meters of 62.5/125 micron multimode fiber An optical fiber with a larger core than singlemode fiber. It is the most commonly used fiber for short distances such as LANs. Light can enter the core at different angles, making it easier to connect the light source to broader light sources such as LEDs. (or 550 meters of 50/125 micron fiber). Other physical interfaces for longer fiber distances, as well as UTP UTP (uridine triphosphate): see uracil. (Unshielded Twisted Pair) See twisted pair. UTP - unshielded twisted pair and twinaxial cable will be offered as the standards are finalized. The NovaSwitch 10000gx includes 10, 10/100 ports and one GigaLink port for $7,945. The cost per 10/100Mbps port is $495. Both products will be available in July. About NovaSwitch: third generation switching based on breakthrough technology Acacia's NovaSwitch products are the first to embrace DSP (Digital Signal Processor) technology to achieve full field programmability and high-bandwidth stacking, making NovaSwitch the first of a third generation of Fast, Adaptive switches. Acacia switches feature the company's SNaP (Switched Network adaptive Processor) ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. (Application Specific Integrated Circuit integrated circuit (IC), electronic circuit built on a semiconductor substrate, usually one of single-crystal silicon. The circuit, often called a chip, is packaged in a hermetically sealed case or a nonhermetic plastic capsule, with leads extending from it for ) chipset, which combines the performance and affordability of ASIC technology with the programmability and power of a new generation of DSPs, enabling NovaSwitches to quickly adapt to new networking standards. Acacia transplanted DSP technology from high-volume consumer applications like cellular phones and video games See video game console. , driving down costs and giving Acacia a significant lead in price/performance value. DSP technology was heralded at the Next Generation Networks '96 Conference in Washington, D.C. as a necessary ingredient, along with programmability and wide-bandwidth stacking, for a new breed of advanced LAN switches. The NovaSwitch products deliver on all third-generation criteria, with an unmatched combination of switching and stacking bandwidth - 2.56 gigabits per second internal switching capacity, 3.4 gigabits per second of stacking throughout, and nine gigabits per second aggregate system bandwidth. With tremendous reserve capacity, the NovaSwitch designs have now been expanded to support Gigabit Ethernet today. In addition, Acacia has made significant investments in value-add features for bandwidth and network management, including integral per port RMON (Remote MONitoring) Enhancements to the management information base (MIB) structure used by the simple network management protocol (SNMP). In 1991, RMON added comprehensive network monitoring capabilities. (Remote Monitoring (protocol) remote monitoring - (RMON) A network management protocol that allows network information to be gathered at a single computer. Whereas SNMP gathers network data from a single type of Management Information Base (MIB), RMON 1 defines nine additional MIBs that provide a ), embedded Web-based management and VLANs (Virtual Local Area Networks). NovaSwitches can be stacked up to seven units for up to 280 switched Ethernet ports and up to 40, 100Mbps high-speed uplinks, allowing customers to build small workgroups and expand to support thousands of users and server connections. This building block method of growing a network provides all of the features and performance of enterprise-level chassis platforms for significantly less expense. About Acacia Networks Acacia Networks was founded in January 1995 to apply a powerful new generation of programmable silicon, transplanted from high-volume commercial and consumer applications, to the LAN switching market. Acacia's NovaSwitches offer breakthrough price/performance to networking customers, and a graceful evolution path to emerging Gigabit-speed networking. The privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. is headquartered in Lowell, Mass., and has more than 60 engineers and scientists developing high-speed LAN products and technology. For more information see Acacia's Web site at www.acacianet.com -0- Acacia Networks, NovaSwitch, NovaLink, GigaPlane, GigaLink, Stackplane, NovaView, NovaWeb, mini-NOC, SNaP ASIC, Fast, Adaptive Switching and Megabits to Gigabits are trademarks of Acacia Networks Inc. Other products and company names are trademarks of their respective holders. CONTACT: Alan Raderman Acacia Networks (508) 275-0606 araderman@acacianet.com OR Glen Zimmerman Beaupre & Co. 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 (603) 436-6690 gzimmer@beaupre.com |
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