Rochester, New Hampshire-headquartered Cabletron Systems Inc has announced the 14-slot MMAC-Plus intelligent switching hub system. According to the company, a key feature of the Plus architecture is its provision for technologies like its SecureFast Packet Switching enabling high-speed switching capabilities for shared-access, packet-based local networks to be incorporated into future network environments such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode; the company claims that this feature provides backwards compatibility, enabling emerging technologies to be available on its complete line of Intel 80960-based products. The core technology in the MMAC-Plus hub system is based on Cabletron’s scalable, Fast Packet Switching architecture which will be delivered through hardware-based modules directly connecting to the hub system’s backplane. In their first implementation, the FPS modules will provide up to a claimed 650Mbps of bandwidth and a sustainable forwarding rate exceeding 400,000 packets per second; a fully configured MMAC-Plus with Fast Packet Switching modules will provide aggregate bandwidth of 9Gbps and packet-switching performance in excess of 5.6m packets per second, says the company. Cabletron will initially provide Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI and Asynchronous Transfer Mode modules that use the Fast Packet technology, and claim that the MMAC-Plus can provide more than 500 ports and 160 local network segments. To support demand for Asynchronous Transfer Mode services in the hub, Cabletron has joined with Fore Systems Inc for joint development of an Asynchronous Transfer Mode module for the MMAC-Plus. According to the company, this will provide a non-blocking Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching capacity of 2.5Gbps, and support industry standard Asynchronous Transfer Mode options, including 100Mbps, 155Mbps Synchronous Optical Network and 45Mbps DS3 port interface units. From the management angle, Cabletron says that the MMAC-Plus supports a distributed network management architecture, in which each module hosts a management agent that provides SNMP-based network management capabilities like RMON for network analysis and problem solving. US release for MMAC-Plus is set for May, with Europe following in July. The company declined to give prices.
