SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Dune Networks, a leader in switching fabric and traffic management solutions, announced today the availability of two new devices within the SAND(tm) (Scalable Architecture of Networking Devices) chipset. These devices, named FAP20V and FAP10V, provide 20 Gbps and 10 Gbps ingress/egress comprehensive traffic management functionality. The devices feature one (FAP10V) or two (FAP20V) SPI4.2 interfaces and a switch fabric interface. The FAP's unique ability to interconnect and communicate via the fabric interface allows any system of any size to provide end-to-end rate and weight guarantees for packet flows.

Distinctive configurations provide different types of applications: The FAP devices may be configured as standard stand-alone ingress or egress traffic management devices and as such, they solve line-card local traffic management requirements. In this mode, a FAP10/20V device provides comprehensive local line-card traffic management services, such as: deep buffering, congestion avoidance via WRED and drop-from-front, fine-grained weight and rate-based flow shaping toward the egress port and multicast replication per and within port. A FAP10/20V device as a stand-alone device can further implement a 20-Gbps, shared-memory, flow-aware switch, which switches traffic among its active SPI4.2 channels. This configuration may be used for Metro edge switch/router application. The FAP devices may interconnect directly in a mesh (fabric-less) configuration or via the SAND-switching device (FE200) for higher capacity. This flexible interconnect configuration options allows the system vendor to design a full product line using the same chipset, sharing the same line and fabric cards. For example, for low-capacity platforms, the fabric-less (mesh) FAP configurations may be used, while higher-capacity platforms may use the same line cards connected via fabric cards. The fabric interface is further used to enable different redundancy schemes, such as N+K, N-K, and 1:1 active redundancy. "In 2002, Dune Networks introduced the most scalable architecture to the fabric market," said Jag Bolaria, Senior Analyst with the Linley Group. "Delivering on the architecture, this latest product offers traffic management with rate and weight guarantees across a full system. Dune introduces the only traffic manager that operates over a fabric that can provide these capabilities. Ingress-to-egress system-level rate guarantees are fundamental to metro services offered by carriers."

Dune Networks