Force10 Networks has announced that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Labs has selected the ExaScale family of virtualized switch/routers to help power its network. ExaScale was chosen largely based on its industry-leading density and performance characteristics, which are required to satisfy the needs of its ongoing scientific research as well as the day-to-day operations of its campus LAN.

“For more than 60 years, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory has been pushing the boundaries of numerous scientific disciplines, and that has always required cutting-edge research tools,” said Vincent Bonafede, manager of the Network Operations Group for Brookhaven Lab. “To explore new frontiers of science, it is important to use a next-generation, high-performance network with ultra-high, non-blocking throughput like the ExaScale E-Series.”

High Performance Needed Even Under Extreme Network Load

The stability, density and performance that the ExaScale switch/router provides for Brookhaven utilizes third-generation Force10 technology that incorporates patent-protected innovations and design advances to deliver unmatched non-blocking line-rate Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10 GbE densities. With support for 140 line-rate 10 GbE SFP+ ports per chassis, the ExaScale E-Series is the only switch/router with 100 Gbps of useable data capacity per slot today. In addition to capacity, the E1200 delivers an industry-leading total throughput of more than two billion packets per second across a switching fabric capacity of up to 3.5 Tbps or 250 Gbps full duplex per slot. Utilizing the capacity of the switching fabric, ExaScale delivers continuous non-blocking, line-rate throughput that eliminates network bottlenecks, regardless of packet size or enabled features.

“Brookhaven Lab is a key player in such international research projects as the lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Switzerland,” said Frank Burstein, senior network engineer at Brookhaven. “We need a non-stop reliable network with the density and performance characteristics required to operate under extreme load. Force10 fits our needs with its high-availability platforms, which offer high performance at full load even with full layer 3 applications implemented. Force10 also provides us with a 100Gbps-ready platform for the future of our scientific research, which was an important consideration in our choosing it.”

“In conjunction with the needs of our scientific research we also had to address a high- performance core networking requirement for our campus LAN,” Burstein added. “Stability, density and performance are instrumental in order to keep our network available for day-to-day operations. This core must be fully interoperable with industry standards and our existing installed network equipment. The easy management and configuration of the Force10 products is attributable to a simple command line management structure familiar to us. Implementing the Force10 operating system was also easy and helps simplify building networks and existing systems in a multi-vendor environment.”

The Force10 Reliable Networking product portfolio supports advances in reliability, network control and scalability that enable businesses and network operators to lower their total cost of ownership. By building a flexible network that is ready to support emerging and evolving applications, customers can optimize their networks for current needs as well as future requirements.