Hewlett-Packard Thursday continued to push its “gig to the desktop” initiative with a handful of new products.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and printer maker released seven high-performance networking modules for its HP Procurve Routing Switch 9300m series. The devices are equipped with what HP calls “Enhanced Performance (EP) technology-based” and allow for Gigabit port density, wire-speed network traffic accounting and 10 Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth.
The modules will compete with similar products from Cisco Systems or 3Com
, which HP claims cost too much to purchase and to maintain. The company said it will market the add-ons to business networks that want to resolve performance, security, network traffic management and capacity issues.
The new modules for the HP Routing Switch 9300m series include: EP 8-port Mini-GBIC Redundant Management module, EP 16-port Mini-GBIC module, EP 16-port 100/1000-T module, EP 48-port 10/100-TX Telco (RJ-21) module, EP 48-port 10/100-TX RJ-45 module, 10 Gb 10 km module and the T-Flow Management module. The devices range in price from $11,000 to $72,000 apiece.
HP said its new enhancements support both fiber and copper deployments and the support of jumbo frames on Gigabit and 10-Gigabit ports for high-performance remote backup and disaster recovery services.
“We have found that network managers are increasingly interested in networking solutions with dramatically lower cost of ownership from a supplier with a high degree of longevity,” said HP Procurve Networking Business vice president and general manager John McHugh.
The new modules also provide sFlow traffic accounting technology, which is based on HP’s Extended RMON sampling technology and is built into the new EP ASIC hardware. The technology allows for on-demand wire-speed network traffic management, capacity planning, quality analysis and security analysis.
The HP Procurve Routing Switch 9300m series also allows separate, secure, private and public domains within the same infrastructure.
The company said the increase in per-port bandwidth and backbone throughput can be used to consolidate links in the data center. In addition, up to four 10-Gigabit links can be trunked, which virtually creates up to a 40-Gigabit pipe between several 9300m switches’ chassis.
HP said its routing division’s goal is to push its 9300/5300 series routing products as well as ramping up its 4100 series products. The rest of the year will be spent on putting 10 Gigabit Ethernet into its products and focusing on VoIP as well as wireless and, of course, security.