Santa Clara, California-headquartered 3Com Corp has announced two additional switching modules for its LANplex 6000 data centre switch. The company claims that the Ethernet/FDDI Switching Module, or EFSM, and the Token Ring Switching Module, TRSM, offerings are the first modules for the LANplex 6000 to incorporate next-generation application specific integrated circuit technology, in the shape of its Intelligent Switching Engine chip. The Ethernet/FDDI module features 16 switched Ethernet ports and two switched FDDI ports per module. With the LANplex 6000 supporting up to 11 Ethernet modules in the 12-slot chassis version, this means that, at 176 switched Ethernet ports, it offers more switched Ethernet ports than any competing data centre switch, says the firm. The four-slot LANplex 6000 chassis supports up to three of the Ethernet Modules. The new offering is also said to provide low latency, single-hop switching at a data transfer data greater than 562,000 packets per second, together with elastic packet buffering and store-and-forward switching for complete package error checking. In addition, said 3Com, it incorporates virtual local networking configurations through port groups, MAC address groups and Internet Protocol routing. The module is compliant with the IEEE 802.1d standard, bridging and intra-network routing, user-definable packet filtering and a broadcast-multicast firewall for security, together with Spanning Tree support. The Token Ring module consists of eight shielded Token Ring ports to support a full ring of 260 stations, with two ports for direct station attachment supporting dedicated 16Mbps or 4Mbps bandwidth to file servers or other critical resources, said 3Com. Up to 11 Token Ring modules can be supported on the LANplex 6000. It also features one FDDI backplane attachment to any of the three LANplex chassis FDDI connections, Source Route and Transparent bridging, 802.1d and IBM Spanning Tree support, added the company. Lastly, it is said to offer translation between Token Ring and FDDI for International Program, Internet Protocol Exchange, SNA and NetBIOS, enabling for direct attachment of FDDI, the interface that users to provide networks with speeds of 100Mbits per second and users token passing access method on a ring or tree topology, servers. The Ethernet/FDDI module is priced at ú14,240 for 18 ports and is out now. The Token Ring module is under ú11,000 and is expected to be available later this year. A future software release will support full duplex Token Ring capabilities, but n o timeframe has been revealed.
