Skip to content

Foundry Adds High-Density Gigabit Ethernet Platform To Award-Winning Application Switch Family

16-port Gigabit Ethernet Application Switch Achieves Industry-Leading Price-Performance on Platform Designed for Scalability, Resilience and Future Growth

San Jose, CA, November 2, 2004 - Foundry Networks®, Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY) a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced the addition of a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet model to its family of award-winning ServerIron® GT E-series application and traffic management switches. The new application switch is ideal for providing application load balancing and denial of service protection for directly attached Gigabit Ethernet servers in high-density server farms. The new switch complements the other ServerIronGT E-series models that include 2-port Gigabit Ethernet, 4-port Gigabit Ethernet and 2-port 10-Gigabit Ethernet configurations. All ServerIronGT E-series models are built on a common system architecture that offers advanced levels of system resilience, support for Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet port expansion and scalable performance with the addition of a second load-sharing application switch module.

The ServerIronGT E-series family supports redundant power, hot standby operation and standards-based self-healing protocols including link aggregation, rapid spanning tree and virtual routing redundancy protocol (VRRP), providing a high-availability application load balancing and traffic management solution for the most demanding data center environments. This purpose-built architecture removes the limitations of alternative PC-based appliances that do not support port expansion, wire-speed Layer 2/3 forwarding, 10-Gigabit Ethernet or seamless performance upgrades.

The new ServerIronGT E-series model features 16 dual-speed, 100/1000 Mbps ports providing high-density and high-capacity connections to directly attached servers. The combination of high-density Gigabit Ethernet, advanced application load balancing and Ethernet switching and routing on a single platform make the new E-series switch a powerful solution for reducing cost and equipment clutter within the data center. The 16-port E-series model has over two and a half times the Layer 4-7 traffic management performance of the ServerIronXL switch, Foundry's well-established application switch used for direct server attachment in 10/100 Mbps Ethernet environments and deployed in over a thousand networks worldwide.

The ServerIronGT E-series line of application switches won the "Best Enterprise Infrastructure Product" award at N+I Tokyo in 2004 for its combination of Layer 2-7 feature integration, attractive pricing, high-availability design, port expandability and performance upgradeability. The ServerIronGT E-series products integrate Foundry's innovative JetCore? switching and packet processing technology to achieve high-performance hardware-based switching and routing services. The E-series family protects the integrity and availability of business-critical services and applications with a suite of network defense measures including extended access control lists, detection and mitigation of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), protection against viruses and worms, and policy-based security control for network-level SPAM mitigation.

"Many of today's data centers are built on Gigabit Ethernet over copper architectures and need a high-density, Gigabit Ethernet load balancing solution for direct server attachment," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager of the Layer 4-7 and Security Products Business Unit for Foundry. "Our new 16-port ServerIronGT E-series product addresses this requirement in a consolidated platform at a compelling price point. The products are also designed for maximum investment protection, allowing the user to add new ports and performance without field replacement."

Foundry's ServerIron application switches provide sophisticated Internet traffic and content management features including server load balancing, URL and cookie based switching, global server load balancing, and transparent cache switching. Some of the world's most demanding customers such as AOL TimeWarner, NTT DoCoMo, and Wachovia Bank rely on Foundry ServerIron systems for server farm scalability and application security.

Pricing and Availability

ServerIronGT EGC16 – 16 Copper Ports of 100/1000 Mbps Ethernet, one application processor module, AC power module, and two expansion slots - $19,995 US List

Other GT E-series models:

  • ServerIronGT EGx2: $15,995 US List
  • ServerIronGT EGx4: $24,995 US List
  • ServerIronGT E10Gx2: $44,995 US List

All GT E-series products are available immediately.

About Foundry Networks

Foundry Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDRY) is a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security and Web traffic management solutions, including Layer 2/3 LAN switches, Layer 3 Backbone switches, Layer 4-7 application switches, wireless LAN and access points, metro routers and core routers. Foundry's customers include the world's premier ISPs, metro service providers, and enterprises, including e-commerce sites, universities, entertainment, health and wellness, government, financial and manufacturing companies. For more information about the company and its products, call 1.888.TURBOLAN or visit www.foundrynet.com.

Media Contacts