PALO ALTO, Calif., June 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan selected Foundry Networks(R), Inc , as the recipient of the 2007 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for the Most Valued Product in the carrier switch and router market. This Award recognizes Foundry's achievements in the Service Provider Core, Multiservice Edge router, Ethernet Service edge, and Ethernet Aggregation segments.
Foundry Networks has stood out for its NetIron(R) MLX and NetIron XMR product families that very cost-effectively offer high port density, scalability, QoS and a comprehensive feature set.
The NetIron XMR router series includes four variations -- four-slot, eight-slot, sixteen-slot, and thirty-two slot -- and supports MPLS, IPv4, and IPv6 on all four models. The seriesXMR offers up to 3.2 Tbps data capacity and approximately 2 Bpps per system processing capacity. The slot-density offered by the NetIron XMR offers service providers significant investment protection along with scalability and hence, helps future-proof the networks.
Foundry Networks has designed the NetIron XMR Series from the ground up to support high performance and scalability and can provide wire-speed as well as low latency and jitter routing for IPv4, IPv6, MPLS, and MPLS VPN services.
The NetIron XMR supports foundry direct routing (FDR) technology, which is the full forwarding information base (FIB) programming in hardware. To enable smooth migration to IPv6, the NetIron XMR routers offer dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 wire-speed routing, and wire-speed IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling.
"The NetIron XMR Series supports IP over MPLS as well as MPLS VPN applications and features multi-VRF Routing," says Frost & Sullivan Lead Analyst for the World Carrier Switch and Router Market Prayerna Raina. "This allows for virtual routing in cases, where the complexity of MPLS is not desired."
The operators can create multiple routing protocol instances that peer with each other in completely virtualized domains while sharing the same physical routers and links. The NetIron XMR Series is designed to support the deployment of multi-service and triple play infrastructures.
The routers are able to deliver a comprehensive suite of QoS mechanisms. Operators can support up to eight distinct traffic classes of prioritization. The XMR routers employ an advanced virtual output queuing (VOQ) architecture as well as novel packet buffering and scheduling, thereby offering non-blocking packet forwarding.
"Additionally, XMR supports weighted random early discard (WRED) for differentiated packet dropping in case of congestion within a given traffic class," notes Frost & Sullivan Principal Analyst for the Carrier Infrastructure Practice Sam Masud. "An important service provider requirement is to ensure high availability of networks, especially since one network may be supporting multiple services and running business and residential traffic over it."
The NetIron XMR ensures high availability through a combination of highly resilient hardware and software design, and advanced failure detection and traffic protection/restoration schemes. The NetIron XMR routers run on the multi-service IronWare operating system that offers advanced capabilities for rapid detection and bypass of link/node failures.
It also includes N+1 redundant switch fabric architecture, through which Foundry is able to offer very high availability and resiliency. Even in the case of multiple fabric card failures, the system continues to operate in a graceful degradation mode, where the system tunes its performance to the remaining fabric capacity.
"Both the products provide a way for seamless migration, be it from IPv4 to IPv6 or from legacy to Ethernet networks," observes Raina. "With attributes such as redundant switch fabric, terabit-scale architecture, wire-speed dual stack IPv4/IPv6 routing, high scalability, compliance with various IEEE and other standards, Foundry has ensured that service providers receive the best performance."
Each year Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to the company that has demonstrated market share leadership through the implementation of a sound business strategy. The recipient has displayed excellence in all areas of the market leadership process, including the identification of industry challenges, market drivers and restraints, as well as strategy development and methods of addressing these market dynamics.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
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Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services, and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. For more information, visit http://www.awards.frost.com/ or http://www.ict.frost.com/
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