Foundry Advances the Intelligent Edge: Moving Convergence, Network Visibility, Mobility, and Security Closer to the End User
Today's networks are providing services considered nearly impossible just a few years ago. Internet, e-mail, voice, and video conferencing are just a few of the business applications that are placing higher demands upon enterprise network infrastructures. Delivering solutions is more than connectivity; it requires advancing the intelligent edge. Resolving concerns such as call quality, reliability, availability, security, and power management are paramount for a complete solution that supports data, voice, and video.
The Foundry product portfolio provides the necessary building blocks for an intelligent edge. Our comprehensive set of intelligent networking solutions span across infrastructure, management, mobility and security. In each of these fundamental components, Foundry provides an extensive group of innovative features and technologies that comprise an enterprise-grade toolbox for network managers to maximize the performance, manageability, and scalability of an enterprise's network infrastructure—edge to core. By enabling business continuity to mission- and business-critical applications and services on the network, Foundry's tools for the intelligent edge allow organizations to enjoy increased return on investment and lower total cost of ownership with their edge-to-core networking infrastructure investments.
The Intelligent Edge Toolbox
As enterprises move toward 10 Gigabit Ethernet and converged networks with voice, video, and data over IP, Foundry's edge switches provide flexible, cost-effective, high-performance switching solutions that can easily grow with the network as next-generation services are enabled.
Foundry Networks' edge switch products are ideal access layer switches for medium to large enterprises. Whether you are charged with deploying converged applications or preparing your network for changing business needs, these Layer 2/Layer 3 switches deliver the network services you need without compromising performance and reliability.
Edge switches such as the FastIron® GS and LS series provide organizations with a scalable "pay-as-you-grow" architecture in a compact form. Featuring redundant power and 10 Gigabit Ethernet upgradeability for high capacity connectivity to the network backbone, the switches deliver the scalability, low latency, and resilience needed to implement a high-value solution that can scale to advance edge applications today and into the future.
Foundry's FastIron Edge X/XE and SuperX Series are a diverse set of switches that meet Layer 2/Layer 3 edge, aggregation, or backbone-connectivity requirements with intelligent network services, including superior quality of service (QoS), predictable performance, advanced security, comprehensive management, and integrated resiliency. It is the ideal networking platform to deliver 10 Gigabit Ethernet. And with the recent addition of IPv6 routing, these platforms deliver a rich set of dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 routing services allowing network operators to gracefully implement and transition to IPv6 while offering leading edge services.
Mobility is increasingly viewed by organizations as a fundamental part of their business strategy. Foundry's mobility solutions can enhance and seamlessly become an intrinsic part of the overall network. Mobility will continue to extend outside the traditional network as it is furthered by 802.11n's increased reliability, high throughput, and coverage range. As wireless networks become more comparable to wired Ethernet, the wireless LAN access adoption rate in enterprise networks will continue to increase.
Foundry's wireless access solution, the IronPoint® Mobility Series, delivers highly scalable wireless LAN deployments, wireline voice quality, and seamless mobility over wireless LAN implementations. This wireless solution includes centralized configuration and management for ease of deployment, a multilayer security approach, integration with existing infrastructure, scalability for large enterprise and branch office locations, and the elimination of channel planning and co-channel interference problems.
Intelligent Edge Equals Convergence, Network Visibility, Mobility, plus Security
Foundry's intelligent infrastructure edge to core empowers enterprises. The converged services and embedded security in Foundry solutions interoperate in harmony allowing network operators and users to do more with less frustration. Foundry's FastIron family of edge switches deliver the feature set needed for a turnkey experience. Readily deployed converged applications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), install almost automatically using integrated Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Discovery (LLDP-MED) coupled with Power over Ethernet (PoE), reducing installation time and increasing productivity. Quality of Service (QoS) is improved through dynamic voice traffic prioritization while security is maintained through embedded capabilities as part of IronShield™ 360, a reliable, robust, high-performance architecture, with wire-speed switching, security, and advanced sFlow® sensor support. Finally, IPv6 capabilities allow for future scalability, increased security, and multicasting.
Through industry-leading features and competitive strengths, Foundry's intelligent management brings extensibility, reliability, services, and open standards to enterprise network infrastructure. Network managers benefit from Foundry's IronView® Network Manager, which provides industry-leading visibility and manageability to today's complex networks, while working with complementary infrastructure from other Foundry partners and vendors. Intelligent management provides PoE flexibility and upgradeability, intelligent bandwidth management, dynamic policy, ease of use, IPv4 and IPv6 capabilities, lower total cost of ownership and higher return on investment.
Foundry's intelligent mobility solutions bring extensibility, reliability, and open standards to enterprise wireless infrastructure. Foundry's IronPoint® Mobility products extend the access edge with intelligent single channel deployment capability, over-the-air QoS and virtual cell technology. The IronPoint products lead the industry when it comes to ease of deployment, scalability, and wireless application performance. Foundry's latest additions to its wireless solutions with IEEE 802.11n for the intelligent edge allow enterprises to maximize the potential of wireless as an alternative or extension to a traditional wired access to applications. With the advantages of 802.11n, organizations can be confident that their business-critical applications can be accessed away from the desktop to allow increased productivity anywhere and anytime.
Increased intelligence in security brings extensibility, reliability, services, and open standards to enterprise network infrastructure edge to core. Foundry's security solutions feature secure VoIP through 802.1x, private and policy-enforced Virtual LANs (VLAN), secure multicast, lawful intercept, passive and active endpoint authorization, and interoperability with security partners. These and other enterprise security features in Foundry's enterprise products, IronShield 360 network security, and network management software help network managers focus on the fact that security is more about business-oriented risk and risk management than on traditional IT security, especially in relation to company-wide operational, financial, and regulatory threats.
Put Your Network on the Future Track with Advanced Intelligent Edge
Combining Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet with a robust feature set, advance security, exceptional QoS assurance, and intelligent fault detection, Foundry's edge switches and mobility solutions offer maximum productivity and investment protection, while advancing the deployment of intelligent edge solutions and delivering Ethernet services to laptops, servers, workstations, mobile networks, wireless LAN networks, and other Ethernet connected endpoints.
Foundry's innovative networking solutions for the intelligent edge allow organizations to advance the abilities of the network to allow workers to maximize mission-critical application usage, scalability, and traffic bandwidth. With the advantages of our intelligent infrastructure, management, mobility, and security networking solutions, network managers can be confident that their advanced edge to core infrastructures are manageable, capable, and fully prepared to tackle future growth and next generation application needs.