Sunnyvale, California-based Kalpana Inc has announced the first stackable version of its EtherSwitch. The 15-port SNMP-manageable EPS-2015 RS, for 10Base-T networks, supports 10Mbps networks as well as offering full-duplex Ethernet capabilities. The company has also incorporated virtual networking, address filtering, and IEEE 802.1d Spanning Tree Protocol Support into the new product, and has incorporated its EtherChannel full-duplex system for transferring data between two EtherSwitches at 20Mbps as well. Two to seven ports can be configured as full-duplex EtherSwitch to EtherSwitch connections, says Kalpana. Kalpana is also keen to push the low latency of the new product: it says that a packet travelling three hops through three EtherSwitches arives in about 120 microseconds, compared to the 3,000 microseconds which the company says the process would take through store-and-forward devices. For this reason, Kalpana says that the new model can be used in cascaded hierarchical networks without the risk of network time-outs. Indeed, the company claims that a stack of six EtherSwitches delivers an 818,400 packets per second transmission rate, corresponding to up to 550Mbps of throughput. The standard configuration of the product – which does not include full-duplex Ethernet or EtherChannel support – is to cost $7,500, while the addition of these adds $1,000 to the price. Both models are available immediately.