Force10 Networks announced a 44% price cut on its 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, reducing the per-port pricing to $17,000. The company said while “10-Gigabit Ethernet is the natural migration path for today’s networks, many customers were waiting for the expected Ethernet style drop in prices before they upgrade to 10-Gigabit Ethernet.”http://www.force10networks.com
- Force10 Networks’ 10 Gbps Ethernet switch/router supports up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet or 28 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GigE) per chassis. Six custom ASICs deliver non-blocking, line-rate forwarding across all ports, even with access control lists (ACLs) or QoS applied. Force10’s software delivers full functionality L2 switching and L3 routing. The company initially is offering two models: the full-size E1200 featuring 14 line-card slots, 1.2 Tbps non-blocking switch fabric, 40 Gbps bandwidth per line-card slot, redundant route processor modules (RPMs), redundant switch fabric modules (SFMs), redundant power and hot-swap of all key components; and the half-sized E600, which uses the same cards.
- Force10 Networks is headed by Prabhat K. (PK) Dubey. Prior to co-founding the company, Dubey was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at USVP. Before that, he was President and CEO of MMC Networks, a network processor company.
- Force10 Networks has raised $168 million of financing from New Enterprise Associates, US Venture Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, Amerindo Investment Advisors and Pacesetter Capital Group. Force10 is based in Milpitas, California.