The industry's first reference board with eight 1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet ports is now available from Allayer Communications Inc. The AL1023DM-8 provides a board-level solution for the design of multiport Gigabit Ethernet LAN systems. It's targeted at OEMs that are designing switches with two, four, six, or eight Gigabit Ethernet ports, or combinations of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet ports. Such systems enable high-performance, high-availability networks from the WAN edge all the way to the server and desktop computer.
This device features eight 10/100/1000Base-T ports for connection over standard Category 5 twisted-pair cable. It includes four AL1023 dual-port Gigabit switches, each with the RoX-II interface. These switches support essential network features, such as trunking, port-based quality of service (QoS), and tag-based VLANs. The board also supports four classes of service that let a networking switch recognize and give priority to delay-sensitive packets of data that have been marked for prioritized delivery.
The trunking feature is fully compatible with the IEEE-802.3ad standard. With it, designers can combine multiple Gigabit channels into a single logical channel with load-balancing and trunk-failover capabilities. The VLAN features also let designers create multiple logical LANs from one physical LAN. Additionally, the AL1023 supports advanced features like broadcast storm control and Layer-2-based security for each port. And, it can be used in conjunction with Allayer's ALPOS48 Ethernet-to-WAN translator device to enable seamless LAN-to-WAN connectivity.
The RoX-II system can be extended with additional RoX-II-based network devices, such as network-management circuits. Connectors for adding Allayer's existing AL300A-based management daughterboard are provided by the reference board. The AL300A management engine collects network-management information from up to 32 ports and provides spanning-tree support. Also, it supplies all of the management-information-base statistics required to support both the SNMP and the RMON protocol. The device even contains a separate bus that reports network-management and/or data packets to an attached CPU.
Available now, the AL1023DM-8 costs $4000 each.
Allayer Communications Inc., 107 Bonaventura Dr., San Jose, CA 95134; (408) 570-0888; fax (408) 570-0880; www.allayer.com.
