Riverstone Networks Inc. has come out with the XGS family of Layer 3 switches, which delivers 10gbps performance at less than $10,000 per port. The company says that’s more than 50 percent below the cost of other available solutions.
"No one demands more of a network or pushes the performance limits further than our world class faculty, students and research team," says Jack Costanza, manager of IT services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Riverstone's solution is the only one we have seen that delivers true 10 gigabit Ethernet performance at a price point competitive with gigabit Ethernet."
According to industry analysts The Dell'Oro Group, most customers are unwilling to pay the significant price premium of 10gbps over gigabit Ethernet. In its recently Ethernet Switch Report, the Dell'Oro Group said, "The price of 10gbps Ethernet still has to come down significantly to entice enterprise customers into volume deployment."
Riverstone's XGS, which will be generally available by SUPERCOMM, combines line-rate switching and routing with MPLS. Each linecard ships with MPLS hardware. The XGS 9016 is a 16-slot, 320 gig unit and the XGS 9008 is an eight-slot 160 gig fabric product.
In Tolly Group tests, Riverstone's family of XGS switches received the Tolly Tested True10 certification. The Tolly Group's True10 program puts vendor solutions through a series of rigorous tests designed to measure critical performance metrics to certify that the solutions deliver line-rate 10 gigabit and are ready for the reliability demands of carrier and enterprise networks. With 100 percent zero-loss throughput across all 10 gigabit Ethernet ports for frame sizes ranging from 64 to 1518 bytes, Riverstone's XGS family is the first to receive 4T certification.
Video is one of the key applications Riverstone is addressing with its XGS family of switches. "Riverstone is the first vendor to deliver line-rate 10 gigabit throughput with full function MPLS, and they do it at a revolutionary price point," says Bradley Frye, data services manager at Knology, a Georgia-based provider of advanced broadband services across the Southeast. "Riverstone's solution provides the network capacity and intelligence we need to extend our video on demand service offerings."
As demand for VOD services continues to increase, Knology needs the bandwidth capacity of 10gbps Ethernet. Typically, one gigabit Ethernet port can support up to 250 video streams. For its 70,000 subscribers, Knology's network needs to handle 280 gigabits of video traffic.
With more than 7 million video on demand subscribers in the U.S. alone, Riverstone says video will continue to drive the adoption of 10 gigabit Ethernet technology.
The deployment of bandwidth-intensive services and applications, such as grid computing, voice over IP transport and telemedicine, will also accelerate the adoption of 10 gigabit Ethernet networks, according to Riverstone.
