Marlborough, Massachusetts-based Gigabit switching start up Prominet Corp is shipping its first product, which it claims is the world’s fastest and highest capacity local area network Gigabit Ethernet switch. The P550 Cajun Switch has a switching capacity of 45.7 Gigabits per second. Prominet also claims that its also developing the fastest layer 3 routing switch, due for release in January, a switch that uses hardware rather than software to route Internet Protocol packets at 18 million packets per second, ten times faster than the available competition, it claims. Prominet is following a reseller model, and is said to be in negotiation with three major systems integrators. The switch uses a matrix of seven ASICs that were developed in house and are fabricated by LSI Logic and Toshiba Corp.