Westford, Massachusetts-based Cascade Communications Corp announced the Cascade 500 Asynchronous Transfer Mode switch. It seamlessly integrates with its existing family of B-STDX 8000 and 9000 multiservice wide area network switches (CI No 2,408) to protect existing investment in SNA and local area network internetwork, and offer an Asynchronous Mode migration route, said Cascade. The switch is designed as a 16-slot chassis system, and is a non-blocking Asynchronous Transfer Mode switch with a 5Gbps and 10Gbps capacity. It supports speeds of 34Mbps, 155Mbps and 622Mbps, and supports 56 STM-1, 112 E-3 and 14 STM-4 ports and their international equivalents. It provides for network moves, additions and changes, as well as deployment of native Asynchronous Mode applications such as local area network emulation and videoconferencing.
Virtual circuit
The company said the 500 supports 3,000 Switched Virtual Circuits per second per switch and offers distributed signalling through a dedicated virtual circuit processor implemented on every input-output board, eliminating the performance limitations and single points of failure found in centralised processor implementations. One novel aspect of the switch is its so-called quad-plane cell switch architecture, which implements four independent parallel switching planes configured for Constant, Real Time Variable, Non-Real Time Variable and Unspecified/Available bit rates. It ensures that delay-sensitive applications, such as video and speech, will not be disrupted by high-volume, bursty data traffic, said the company. Each plane is fully programmable and automatically configurable to allocate switching capacity to individual quality of service requirements. The switch also includes Virtual Network Navigator network routing software, which provides routing that maintains end-to-end quality of service across an Asynchronous Transfer Mode network, as well as offering a unified routing domain of mixed Frame Relay, Switched Multi-Megabit Data Service and Asynchronous Mode networks. It is SNMP-manageable with the Cascade network management system. It is out in the fourth quarter at from $26,250, with typical systems averaging around $157,500 to $210,000.
