Expand Networks announces the ACCELERATOR 6800, the company's first network optimization appliance that supports Gigabit Ethernet.

by Wayne Kawamoto [May 8, 2002]

Expand Networks recently announced its ACCELERATOR 6800, the first in the company's ACCELERATOR line to support Gigabit Ethernet, the standard of connectivity at high-speed data centers and PoPs.

According to the company, its ACCELERATOR 6800 aims to support an increasing number of high-speed data links that connect hub and aggregation sites, and high-speed data centers that manage hundreds of remote sites.

Expand Networks' ACCELERATORs are intelligent network optimization appliances that are designed to improve network performance through enterprise caching technology. Enterprise Caching is an application-independent technology that focuses on increasing network capacity that's available to all enterprise applications: IP, non-IP, web, and non-web.

The company claims that its ACCELERATORs help service providers and enterprises to "do more with less," allowing them to leverage their existing network by squeezing from 100 percent to 400+ percent additional throughput, which translates to average payback periods between 3 and 12 months. The Enterprise Caching is designed to operate on all network traffic on both ends of the Wide Area Network (WAN), central as well as remote sites. Repeat data patterns are removed from the network with important bandwidth savings.

The ACCELERATOR 6800 Series is designed to offer the following features:

• Gigabit Ethernet
  It's the first bandwidth optimization appliance that can scale to Gigabit Ethernet. Installed on a LAN, the ACCELERATOR 6800 should enable OC-3/STM-1 throughput and beyond.
  
  
• Support for hundreds of remote sites
  A single device is designed to support hundreds of remote sites, making data center deployments easy to manage and economical.
  
  
• High density
  The ACCELERATOR 6800 may be the only 2U device that can combine rack-and-stack and connect to a Layer 4 Load Balancer to provide larger scalability, which provides a high density solution.
  
  
• High availability
  The ACCELERATOR 6800 offers resilient hardware with redundant power supplies, no moving parts and auto-bypass functionality. In addition, it offers classic ExpandOS features like redundancy protocols (HSRP and VRRP) and redundant unit failover options.
  
  
• Network resiliency
  The ACCELERATOR 6800's remote site "keep-alive" and packet loss recovery features may ensure greater predictability of network performance and offer data-surge protection.
  
  
• Simple data center integration
  With its integration with Network Management platforms, standard SNMP and RMON management and monitoring, Cisco-like CLI, and a WebUI, the ACCELERATOR 6800 may provide the flexibility to be integrated into any data center environment.

"Wide Area Networks are getting faster, but not fast enough, given their expensive nature and difficulty to upgrade," said Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder, Infonetics Research. "The ACCELERATOR 6800 Series uses intelligent data analysis and elimination of repeat data patterns in order to expand WAN bandwidth on an on-going basis. The ACCELERATOR 6800 Series uses features, such as data surge protection, bandwidth multiplier, and advanced queuing, to make it an attractive solution for enterprises that depend on high performance networks."

"The costs of high speed links form a significant portion of our telecom budget, especially for international circuits. But with Expand's technology for Gigabit Ethernet, we believe that this cost-effective solution will provide our subscribers with much faster connection while enabling us to save on high bandwidth expenses," said Richard Sharpe, managing director, altohiway Ltd., an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the United Kingdom. "The ACCELERATOR 6800 is a highly scalable solution that will open up new opportunities for all high-speed enterprise networks, like we are confident they will do for us."

"At the beginning of the year we announced the 1800 Series, a low speed, affordable ACCELERATOR for organizations with numerous branch offices like retailers, financial institutions, government agencies and ISPs," said Talmon Marco, president and co-founder, Expand Networks. "The ACCELERATOR 6800 Series targets these same businesses, but it is a solution designed for their extensive data centers operations."

Availability and pricing
The ACCELERATOR 6800 Series, with copper Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and ExpandOS software, is scheduled for release later this quarter. A fiber Gigabit Ethernet interface module will be available in the third quarter of 2002.

The United States list price will be $44,995. The ACCELERATOR 1800 sells for under $2,000 and enhances bandwidth on 128 Kbps lines.

The products will be sold through Expand's distribution, reseller, service provider, and strategic partner channels.

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