Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x8100 chassis switches

Allied Telesis has announced a significant upgrade to its SwitchBlade x8100 Series next-generation intelligent chassis switches via its new CFC960 controller card. 

The controller card offers 960 Gbps of switching capacity, delivering throughput of 1.92 Tbps per chassis. Dual CFC960 controller cards deliver 160 Gbps, per line card slot, doubling the throughput of the existing Allied Telesis CFC400 controller card. In addition, the card unlocks new features such as Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) Lite, and Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCStack) Plus, which allows two chassis to be stacked to form a virtual switch for increased reliability and reduced management overhead. The new features are suitable for large-scale enterprise and hosting environments. It also supports Allied Telesis Management Framework (AMF), a tool for simplifying network management and reducing everyday network operating costs. The CFC960 can either be a member of an AMF network or can act as a master for up to 120 nodes.

It features a quad-core 1.2 GHz CPU, which is suited for the most rigorous applications. With the increased use of virtualisation and hosted or cloud-based applications, networks are now more dynamic than ever. The CFC960 features four 10 GE SFP+ ports on the front panel to provide additional uplink capacity. Alternatively, they can be used with VCStack Plus for high-capacity dedicated stacking - allowing two SwitchBlade x8100 Series chassis to be stacked together with up to 160 Gbps stacking bandwidth. VCStack Plus is built using the same stacking technology that Allied Telesis uses for its AlliedWare Plus 1 RU switches, for a feature-rich, stable, and consistent user experience.