Northern Telecom Ltd announced the Magellan edge switch, an Asynchronous Transfer Mode switch running at between 2.5Gbps to 10Gbps and aimed at the carrier market. The switch is the first major result of the Canadian’s alliance with Fore Systems Inc last January (CI No 2,599), and will support full interoperability with existing Fore customer premises equipment. According to Northern Telecom, the edge switch features an integral RISC processor-based non-blocking scalable architecture that offers multicast support and automatic re-route and self-learning capabilities. According to the company, the product supports the ATM Forum’s User-to-Network Interface, UNI 3.0/3.1, the Network-to-Network Interface, NNI, Inter-switch Signalling Protocol and the Broadband Inter Carrier Interface. In addition, says Northern Telecom, it offers Asynchronous Transfer Mode NNI signalling and permanent and switched virtual circuits (Q.2931) support. On the Asynchronous Mode-local network interconnection side, it features local area network emulation, Internet Protocol over Asynchronous Mode and Internet Protocol multicasting, with interfaces and services including T1/E1, J2, T3/E3, OC-3c/STM-1 and OC-12/STM-4, says the company. Turning to traffic specifications, the switch is said to support constant and variable bit rates, and features a ‘smart’ buffering architecture with per virtual circuit queuing. The base pricing for the minimum-configuration 2.5Gbps offering will be $60,000, and the thing is shipping now.
