Foundry To Debut Super-Fast Core Router

Foundry Networks is splashing down into the high-performance Internet core routing market.

At the ComNet trade show next week in Washington, D.C., Foundry will demonstrate its NetIron backbone routers, which the company said will outperform similarly configured units from Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks.

Foundry said the NetIron routers will have a capacity of 256 gigabits per second - more than four times the capacity of Cisco's GSR 12000 family - at prices much lower than its competitors. A NetIron router that includes a four-port OC-3 (155-megabit-per-second) module with two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, for example, would run less than $70,000, compared with more than twice that for the GSR 12008.

"We're entering the Internet core routing space in a big way," said Marshall Eisenberg, director of product marketing at Foundry.

The NetIron family, scheduled to be available in late March, will include the NetIron 400, a four-slot model with a starting price of $28,000, and the 800, an eight-slot version starting at $34,000.

Foundry expects to sell the NetIron to service providers of all kinds. Initial customers for the NetIron include Phoenix Networks, an Internet service provider; Telocity, a provider of Digital Subscriber Line service; and Vstream, an application service provider.

The NetIron family will be available with a variety of interface modules, including Gigabit Ethernet, DS-3 (45-Mbps), OC-3 and Asynchronous Transfer Mode, as well as packet-over-Synchronous Optical Network modules for OC-12 (622-Mbps) and OC-48 (2.5-Gbps) links to be delivered later this year.