What the new SuperX series from the San Jose, California-based vendor offers that differentiates it from the competition is the ability to deploy the devices without oversubscription, which neither Cisco nor other players such as Extreme Networks can offer.
With a Catalyst 4500, you’ll be 8-to-1 oversubscribed for the 48-port density as our new switches, whereas we go to 48 without oversubscription, said Bill Ryan, Foundry’s product marketing manager. [This means the new boxes can offer] full wire speed on all ports, rather than having to deploy oversubscribed switches to avoid contention, he said.
The SuperX series comprises all three L2/3 switch ranges from Foundry, the FastIron for edge and wiring closet deployments, TurboIron for aggregation and core scenarios, and BigIron for enterprise and metro backbone, with the first two available now and the third shipping in March. That said, Steve Schuchart, senior analyst for enterprise architecture at Current Analysis, said the wiring closet is the primary target.
Price-wise, the FastIron starts out at $4,995 for the chassis with AC power supply and fan tray, plus $5,995 for two 10GbE ports. The management module is a further $9,995. The TurboIron ships as a chassis with management module and 16 ports of 10GbE for $44,995. That is much cheaper than Cisco, Ryan said.
Foundry cites Dell’Oro Research to show that it achieved market leadership in L3 10GbE switching in the fourth quarter of 2004. In the overall market, however, it is of course small fry compared to the Cisco behemoth. As such, it is aware that Cisco and others will be moving to launch products that will compete squarely with the SuperX series, but it reckons it has a lead of between six and nine months.
How significant the inroads it will make on Cisco’s market remain to be seen. Schuchart said oversubscription is not such a critical factor in the wiring closet market, and that many customers in that segment will simply wait for an upgrade to their 4500 boxes from Cisco. He also noted that in their marketing Foundry avoid comparisons with the 4510R, because they don’t have redundant management modules, so they can’t offer stateful switchover.
