SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Extreme Networks, Inc., (NASDAQ:EXTR) , today announced that its innovative Metro Ethernet switching solutions successfully provide carrier-class Sub 50-millisecond failover on networks across its installed base of 4 million switch ports. Results of tests conducted by BT's research, technology and IT operations business, BT Exact, on Extreme's Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) version 2 confirm that EAPS delivers sub 50-millisecond failover on both copper and fiber interfaces. "Extreme has deployed high performance Ethernet Metro networks that deliver the speed, carrier-class resiliency and simplicity that service providers require," said Duncan Potter, vice president of marketing, Extreme Networks, Inc. "We take networks to the next level with unique innovations such as our EAPS failover capability, allowing Ethernet to surpass the performance of legacy network technologies such as SONET/SDH. As evidence, EAPS is used today by our customers throughout the world." These test scenarios, designed to simulate a real-world network, reflect that the performance of EAPS is on par with Automatic Protection System (APS) for SONET/SDH-type network infrastructures. The tests also demonstrate that EAPS surpasses the performance of the commonly deployed Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) running on a switched infrastructure. And, since EAPS uses standards-based Ethernet it is backwards compatible with all Extreme switches running ExtremeWare. In fact, EAPS offers Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) 802.17-like functionality today without additional expense and is available on 4 million-plus standards-based Ethernet shipped ports. The recently completed scalability tests of Extreme Networks' industry-leading switches demonstrate that Extreme's EAPS capability can perform protection switching of Layer 2 traffic in less than 50ms for up to 100 protected VLANs (virtual LANs), with each VLAN carrying 1,000 traffic flows. The tests also verified that Layer 3 traffic using BGP (border gateway protocol) routing performed protection switching in less than one (1) second with 100,000 BGP routes advertised and up to 10,000 traffic flows. Notably, no BGP sessions were dropped during any of the tests. These tests differed remarkably from competitors' previous tests: -- A six-node network was used to show failover throughout a complete network, instead of using a single device and test equipment to simulate a network. -- Scalability tests were extended to the switch limit of 131,000 MAC addresses, 4,000 VLANs and 100,000 IP addresses, rather than a minimum configuration of one VLAN, two MAC addresses and two IP addresses. -- Layer 2 (VLAN) and Layer 3 (IP) were tested simultaneously rather than being tested individually. -- Testing was completed on Extreme's least expensive Inferno series stackable devices, showing noteworthy cost savings over modular devices with expensive proprietary interfaces typically tested for this type of functionality. -- EAPS' resiliency was tested on both fiber and copper Ethernet interfaces. Using EAPS, Metro carriers benefit by gaining the cost efficiency and scalability of Ethernet while realizing higher levels of reliability for services. For example, a carrier can now deploy a highly dependable and inexpensive fiber-optic ring spanning hundreds of route miles by combining EAPS in conjunction with a redundant design with aggregation, edge and premise switching platforms. Results of the test can be found at www.extremenetworks.com