Foundry Networks Intros FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK Switches

Foundry Networks (News - Alert), a provider of solutions for end-to-end switching and routing, has announced the availability of the FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK stackable Layer 2/3 switches using IronStack technology.

 

In addition to these pre-configured models, a field-upgradeable IronStack upgrade kit with stacking ports is also currently available for existing FastIron GS and LS users.

 

The FastIron LS-STK switches are stackable Layer 2 switches that deliver wire-speed performance in a compact, one rack unit (1U) high and 12.92`` deep form factor, while FastIron GS-STK switches can be upgraded to support PoE for powering IP endpoints including IP phones, wireless LAN access points and IP surveillance cameras.

 

The FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK models are part of the FastIron GS and FastIron LS Series 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) access switch families. According to company officials, these solutions offer the benefits of “pay-as-you grow” scalability, ease of single switch operations, and low initial cost of a compact access switch.

 

With the new FastIron GS-STK and LS-STK switches featuring Foundry’s IronStack intelligent stacking technology, users can increase or decrease port counts by adding or re-deploying switches in an IronStack stack.

 

These switches are flexible to mix-and-match Power over Ethernet (PoE)-ready, PoE upgradeable and non-PoE switches in a single stack; also they offer ready migration from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps, gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10GbE.

 

In addition, switches are upgradeable with IEEE (News - Alert) 802.3af PoE for scalable IP phone and wireless AP deployments—limited to FastIron GS-STK models.

 

Some of the key features include cross-unit IEEE 802.3ad and static trunking; hot insertion and removal of stacking units; support for up to eight units in an IronStack configuration; Stack control automatically fails over to slave unit in event of master unit failure.

 

FastIron GS-STK and LS-STK switches come with a single IP address for the entire stack manageability. Users can view and manage an IronStack configuration as a single entity through Foundry's IronView Network Manager (INM).

 

Officials said that the FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK switches support a rich set of Layer 2 Ethernet services, static routing and IGMP and MLD multicast snooping. Additionally, the FastIron GS-STK and FastIron LS-STK switches support Base Layer 3 features for increased networking and configuration flexibility.

 

The features of Base Layer 3 are static routing with RIP v1/v2 announcements, virtual and routed interfaces, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) relay and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP).

 

“With the availability of the FastIron stackable edge switches, Foundry allows enterprise customers to deploy high-performance networking infrastructures with the initial cost advantage of fixed configuration access switch solutions,” said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager for Enterprise Business Unit at Foundry, in a statement