Network World - Extreme Networks this week unveiled 100G and 40G Ethernet modules as well as SDN application support for its BlackDiamond X8 core switch.
Extreme's 100/40G XL modules are designed to help scale BlackDiamond X8 networks for virtualized multi-tenant cloud data centers, Internet Exchanges and data center core deployments. They are capable of scaling to 1 million route entries, and hundreds of thousands of addresses and flows through an upgraded TCAM, and logically segment multi-tenant networks with Layer 2 broadcast domains, Extreme says.
Extreme says they are "ideally suited" for evolving data center interconnect architectures with hardware Layer 2 over Generic Routing Encapsulation (L2GRE), and VXLAN transport with several tens of thousands of multicast groups.
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Extreme joins Cisco, Brocade and Huawei as suppliers of 100G Ethernet for data centers. Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent, as well as Cisco and Brocade, provide it for service provider core and edge routing.
The four-port 100G module supports non-blocking, wire-speed performance of Layer 2/3 services, support of 100G-SR -- 100meter -- and 100G-OR 10Km optics, and fault tolerance and redundancy with N+1 power support. The 40G modules sports 12 wire-speed QSFP+ ports.
They allow the BlackDiamond X8 to scale to 32 100G ports and 98 40G ports. Extreme also has a 24-port 40G module that enables the switch to scale to 768 10G and 192 40G ports.
Separately, Extreme says it is supports OpenFlow startup Big Switch Networks' SDN applications for network virtualization and visibility. Extreme says its ExtremeXOS switch operating system can support Big Switch's Big Tap applications for traffic monitoring and network visibility with flow filtering; and Big Virtual Switch application for network virtualization.
Big Switch just debuted these applications this week.
Customer trials of the 12-port 40G and 4-port 100G XL modules begin next year, Extreme says. The 40G module costs $6,000 per port and the 100G module costs $35,000 per port.
Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 25 years, 21 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.
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