MANUFACTURING

Milpitas, CA – Force10 Networks, Inc. announced greater than 40% price reductions on its 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, enabling customers to deploy line-rate 10-Gigabit Ethernet in a next-generation switch/router for just $17,000 per port. “10-Gigabit Ethernet is now affordable,” said John Schaefer, vice president of infrastructure for R.R. Donnelley [NYSE: DNY], a communications services company with 31,000 employees in more than 200 locations worldwide. “Major initiatives in data center and server consolidation for lower TCO are driving massive growth of Gigabit Ethernet servers, which in turn create a need for higher speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet trunks. Pricing has been a hurdle so far, but at $17,000 per port, this will definitely accelerate our plans for deployment of 10-Gigabit Ethernet,” Schaefer said. “Here we go with expected price reductions of Ethernet that we've seen in the past with 10M, 100M, and GE – this time it's with 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Force10 has fired the first shot across the industry's bow, and has now pushed the price down to the point where the decision to deploy 10-Gigabit Ethernet in enterprise applications is viable,” said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research (San Jose, CA). “At $17,000 per port for 10-Gigabit Ethernet, we expect Force10 will accelerate the buying decision for many enterprise network designers.” 10-Gigabit Ethernet Now Affordable “We are taking a leadership role in making 10-Gigabit Ethernet affordable,” said Steve Mullaney, vice president of marketing at Force10. “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. Our new pricing action is the drop they were waiting for and will have a dramatic effect on the adoption of 10-Gigabit Ethernet in the enterprise.” Force10 E-Series: Next-Generation Switch/Routers with True 10-Gigabit Ethernet The E-Series family, consisting of the E1200 and E600, are next-generation switch/routers with the highest density, line-rate performance across all packet sizes (up to 9252 bytes) for Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The E1200 can support up to 336 ports of Gigabit Ethernet and up to 28 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (LAN and WAN PHY) through its 14 line-card slots, 1.2 Tbps non-blocking switch fabric, and 40Gbps bandwidth per line-card slots.