Extreme Networks Inc. has come out with a new carrier-grade Ethernet switch for lower density business and residential aggregation applications.
The BlackDiamond 12802R offers support for real-time services through hierarchical QoS that controls bandwidth on a per-subscriber, per-application basis; support for Provider Backbone Bridging and the ability to upgrade to PBB-TE through a software only-upgrade (available early next year); peering between Ethernet providers via the Ethernet network to network interface (NNI); and hardware and software resiliency.
Peter Lunk, Extreme’s director of service provider marketing, said that while a lot of network equipment providers spend a lot of time on the hardware end of resiliency, much less attention is focused on software resiliency. That’s not the case with the 12802R, he said, adding that all processes on the switch work in a protective memory so they can be started and stopped without rebooting the switch.
“In moving towards a VLAN per customer model, the Provider Backbone Bridging and hierarchical QoS capabilities of Extreme’s BlackDiamond 12802R and BlackDiamond 12804R provide us the scalability we need for our IPTV deployment,” said Juha Lindstrom, IP Architect for Salon Seudun Puhelin, part of Finnet Group. “The economics and carrier-grade features of the BlackDiamond 12802R give us tremendous flexibility for architecting our Ethernet service delivery network.”
Lunk said this product, which resulted from feedback it’s received from service providers, primarily in Europe and Asia, falls in the same broad category as the Alcatel 7450 ESS-2 and Cisco ME 6524. However, he said that the Alcatel product offers similar functionality yet costs almost twice as much while the Cisco box is similarly priced yet doesn’t have such carrier-grade features as PBB, hierarchical QoS and 10GB uplinks.
List pricing for the BlackDiamond 12802R starts at $30,000 for a system including chassis, power supplies, fans and 20 ports of gigabit Ethernet.
Extreme Networks Inc. www.extremenetworks.com
