Northern Telecom Ltd has unified its data network products under the name Magellan, and has announced a cell-based networking switch designed to bring together data, speech, video and image networks. Called Magellan Passport, it is the first cell-based product in the Canadian’s Magellan networking range and can handle both cell and frame switching. Cell switching, which minimises the amount of processing in each switch, is geared to systems that handle information in a variety of forms such as data and video, while frame switching is efficient at handling burst data. Passport is designed to be used as an upgrade for existing frame-based systems, when users want to add Asynchronous Transfer Mode cell switching functions. The Passport switch is designed to complement the capabilities of the DPN 100 packet switching product line, and provides bandwidth consolidation for the heterogeneous traffic. It has an aggregate capacity of 1.6Gbps in a single shelf configuration. Each board includes RISC processors and custom chips to ensure high throughput for access and trunking. Enhancements to the Passport switch will include support for Ethernet, Token Ring and FDDI interfaces as well as transparent, source route, and source route transparent bridging. It will be generally available in the first quarter of 1994. No prices.
