Dallas-based Efficient Networks Inc used the Networld+Interop show in Las Vegas to unveil the ENI-25p adapter – the latest addition to its family of Asynchronous Transfer Mode products. The adapter is touted as the first 25.6Mbps network interface card to ship as ABR ready, providing available bit rate traffic management capability in hardware using the ATM Forum’s Traffic Management 4.0 specification, which is due for final ballot this month. The ENI-25p is designed using Efficient’s custom application-specific integrated circuit technology. This custom ASIC, called the Lanai, includes a PCI2.1-compliant interface, a high-performance segmentation and reassembly engine and a 25.6Mbps physical layer. The ENI-25p provides the user with a socketed option for available bit rate capability through the addition of AfterBurner, Efficient’s custom ASIC for available bit rate. In addition to available bit rate, the ENI-25p supports other ATM Forum-compliant traffic categories such as CBR, UBR and VBR. Each of these are supported on a per virtual circuit basis, enabling up to 1,024 simultaneous open virtual circuits concurrently segmenting and-or reassembling. Product features include ATM Forum-compliant signalling (UNI 3.0 and UNI 3.1), local network LAN Emulation Client v1.0, multiple ELAN support, Ethernet and Token Ring local network emulation, ILMI, RFC 1577/1755 (Classical IP over Asynchronous Mode) and diagnostics. The ENI-25p is due to ship in June for $250, with the Available Bit Rate-capable AfterBurner expected to arrive before the end of the year.
