Enterasys will roll out this week at Interop New York a line of stackable switches that feature integral 10Gbps Ethernet ports, IPv6 support and increased bandwidth and throughput vs. its earlier models.
The SecureStack C3 is designed for Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet access at the network edge with automatic discovery, classification and prioritization of IP telephony, HD video conferencing and business intelligence analytics traffic.
The C3 line features optional 15.4 watt IEEE 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) for wireless access points, VoIP telephones, and IP security cameras, and identity-based policies to help assure service-level agreements and prevent security incidents based on user and application access privileges. “The reason you buy Enterasys is their embedded security and their policy management,” says Steve Schuchart, an enterprise network systems analyst at Current Analysis. “That’s the stuff that makes them so popular with college campuses and other public networks that get a lot of abuse. To bring that down to a little bit less expensive price point with performance in terms of 10G and Gigabit Ethernet — nothing wrong with that at all.”
In a stack of eight, the C3 supports a maximum of 384 10/100/1000Mbps copper ports with PoE, 192 gigabit fiber ports and 16 10Gbps connections, Enterasys says. IPv4, IPv6 and IP Multicast routing is supported as well.
The switches feature 571.2 million packet/sec of throughput and 1.54Tbps of bandwidth. By contrast, Enterasys’ previous top-end stackable, the SecureStack C2, features 1Tbps of bandwidth and 285.7Mbps of throughput.
Eight hardware-based QoS priority queues are available per C3 port with support for 16,000 Layer 2 media access control addresses and 1,024 virtual LANs, Enterasys says.
The C3 line also identifies and classifies incoming traffic; discovers attached users, applications and devices via the LLDP-MED protocol; authenticates them using 802.1X, Web or MAC authentication; and enforces priority or security policies through wire-speed rate limiting, filtering or forwarding decisions, Enterasys says.
Pricing for starts at $145 per port.