Ascend Communications Inc has added to its GRF range of Internet protocol switches. The company claims that the new GRF 1600 is the only Internet protocol switch capable of delivering 10 million packets per second throughput with a fully-loaded 16-slot configuration of high-speed media cards. The switching fabric of the GRF 1600, combines with Ascend’s QBRT Quick Branch Routing Technology hardware-assisted routing table lookup. The GRF range combines a crosspoint switching fabric with multi-ported Internet protocol Forwarding Media Cards to overcome the limitations of conventional bus-based architectures, whose performance steadily degrades as more ports are added, says the company. External local and wide area network connections are provided by an assortment of hot-swappable multi-port media cards. The GRF 1600 base unit will be available in April at a starting price of $32,000. Pricing for the Media cards for the GRF 400 and 1600 starts at $13,500.
