INTERCONNECTS

Foundry Networks, Inc. and the National Capital Institute of Telecommunications (NCIT) announced today successful interoperability and performance testing of Foundry's NetIron IMR 640 MPLS router, a highly scalable solution for the delivery of broadband IP, Ethernet and MPLS VPN services. The interoperability tests included successful testing with MPLS equipment from Alcatel, Cisco, and Juniper. The testing was performed by a team of industry and academia professionals, under the direction of Dr. Dan Ionescu, Professor with the School of Information Technology and Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering, and Director of the Network Computing and Control Technologies Research Laboratory (NCCT) of the University of Ottawa, an NCIT funded laboratory. The tests involved deployment of the NetIron IMR 640 in the MPLS over DWDM NCIT*net 2 infrastructure in live production traffic conditions and the dynamic provisioning of MPLS services, including VLL, VPLS, and BGP MPLS VPNs over the heterogeneous MPLS architecture of NCIT*net2. "The NetIron IMR 640 is at the forefront of a new generation of multi-service systems designed to support the latest MPLS traffic engineering and VPN standards. The NetIron IMR 640 is a good example of how vendors like Foundry Networks are taking advantage of new technologies and standard-based design to deliver interoperable, scalable, high-performance and cost-effective solutions that fit equally well into service provider and enterprise environments. Without the strong collaboration of academia and industry, and the opportunity to experiment over a live network, the demonstration of the full range of capabilities of this new technology would not have been possible. The NCIT played a pivotal role in making this happen," said Dr. Ionescu. "Our customers continue to choose Foundry solutions because of their cost-effectiveness, scalability, density, performance and interoperability," said Bobby Johnson, Foundry's Chairman and CEO. "With the introduction of the NetIron IMR 640, we understood the importance of having independent verification of the product's performance and interoperability. We teamed with the NCIT and its NCCT Research Laboratory to perform this testing because of their reputation in the research of information and networking technologies. We are especially pleased with the test results verifying the product's high-performance and multi-vendor interoperability. This testing is an important milestone, validating the readiness of the NetIron IMR 640 for deployment in production networks." "The NCIT is pleased to bring unique value to research partners through a fusion of the innovative capacity of the Ottawa region in telecommunication technologies. Our metro-optical research network, NCIT*net2, is one such advantage that helps propel great engineering to market through interoperability testing to the latest standards and protocols," said Dr. Robert Crawhall, NCIT President. "In validating new technologies such as the NetIron IMR 640, NCIT is instrumental in supporting a new generation of telecom research and development and a strong network for future business."