3Com Corporation has extended its SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 family with the launch of a new wirespeed, stackable 10/100 LAN switch designed to improve performance in the wiring cabinets of business networks.
Dubbed the SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 SE, it offers stacking and stack-wide link aggregation features, as well as the ability to be upgraded to Layer 4 traffic prioritisation and other new generation technologies.
Chris van Niekerk, country manager of 3Com SA, says the new switch is primarily geared for businesses that want lower-cost, 10/100 switching, but want to delay their adoption of multiplayer traffic management capabilities.
"Competitively priced, it is the next logical step for existing 3Com customers to obtain new-generation switching technology," he says. "Competitors` products don`t offer the upgrade path to multilayer traffic management, don`t have the same resiliency features and don`t support as many Gigabit uplinks as the new 3Com switch."
From a technical perspective, the SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 SE supports up to eight Gigabit Ethernet uplinks in a stack in either copper or fibre. Eight switches can be stacked together in a rack with a total of 192 10/100 ports.
The technology includes high-bandwidth link aggregation and resiliency features. Link aggregation, in which traffic load is shared across ports, can be set up on different units in the 3Com stack for added reliability. The redundant power option also adds to the resiliency because it ensures that the switch does not go down in the event of a power failure.
The SuperStack 3 Switch 4400 SE is software-upgradeable to multilayer capabilities to accommodate advanced switching requirements. The hardware of the switch is optimised for this software upgrade. When a customer upgrades the switch, the new capabilities add intelligence to the network infrastructure for prioritising mission-critical traffic, such as voice.
When used with the 3Com NBX IP-based business telephone solutions, a network will be configured automatically to prioritise voice traffic across the network, ensuring maximum quality of service, as well as network utilisation.
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