The 40G mesh networking platform provides high speed low-latency connectivity at the center of the network. It’s all part of Alcatel-Lucent’s larger vision of application fluency and enabling networking for the cloud era.
“The mesh is the fabric within each data center site that provides the super connectivity from Layer 2 to the core,” Cliff Grossner, director Networks Solutions Marketing told Enterprise Networking Planet said. “This is complemented by Data Center Connect that extends across multiple data center sites for inter-connection.”
To enable those efforts, new hardware enhancements are now coming to market. Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K switch was first announced in October of 2010 with 10 GbE connectivity. That switch is now being enhanced with 40 GbE modules as well as software support for SPB. The upgraded OmniSwitch 10K, will complement the 40G capabilities of the 6900 that was announced in April 2011.
There are two new 40G line cards, including a 4-port and an 8-port model with QSFP+ optical as well as copper connectivity. The OmniSwitch 10K has an 8-slot capacity, which could potentially enable a customer to have 64 ports of 40G in a single chassis. Leveraging Alcatel-Lucent’s virtual chassis technology, a pair of OmniSwitch 10K’s can be connected together to deliver as much as 128 ports of 40G that can logically be managed as a single switch.
Read the full story at EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet:
Alcatel-Lucent Goes 40G End to End
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.