Fore wins Best of Breed........................
techweb.com
Fore Systems participated in our first annual ATM test and it was back again this year, this time giving Cabletron some mighty competition. For this test, it brought its ASX-1000 ATM switch, which is a 10-Gbps ATM switch. Fore also brought its ASN-9000 switch, LE-155 ATM switches (which are stackable, six to 10 ports scalable), MPOA Route Servers, ES-3810 Ethernet Edge Switches and ATM NICs (the HE 622 OC-12 NIC and the PCA-200E PC NIC). Its switches support the LANE 1.0 standard, PNNI 1.0, UNI 4.0 and S-PVCs. They also have new support for MPOA 1.0 and S-PVCs.
There were many features Fore was eager to demonstrate to us: Its support for MPOA 1.0; its "connection preservation," nonblocking, dual-Pentium switch processors and the fact that it now has a "non-service-affecting" software upgrade. The company also told us about its support for Sphericall/Computer Telephony Integration/Virtual PBX.
Fore also showed us its support for Stream Runner codecs (OC-3), and PVCs and SVCs. It brought along a PictureTel LiveLAN, which enables Desktop Video Conferencing. It showed us its support for Oracle Video Server (which is a content server) and ForeView, enterprise management system software. It told us about its support for PNNI S-PVCs and for HTML GUI (which is just being introduced).
Fore was the first vendor that we tested. It took little time in setting up and was ready to go within hours. It was the only vendor we tested whose switches allowed our first Chariot test series to run to completion on the first try.
During testing, we pulled an OC-12 and saw a second or so of loss of throughput due to the fact that the OC-3 was overloaded. We saw a slight slowdown of the video in Fore's switch. But despite these minor events, Fore was actually the only vendor, with the exception of Cabletron, whose switches performed exactly the way the vendor professed they could, and that was completely interoperable with all the other vendors. We simply had no problems running any of the Fore equipment. Needless to say, we were impressed.
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SIDEBAR: Fore Wins Best of Breed
There's no question that ATM's 500-pound gorilla is Fore Systems Inc. The Pittsburgh-based manufacturer of "Networks of Steel" has shown conclusively that its connectivity solution has the strength of steel, even if its network looked suspiciously like fiber optic cable instead of steel.
We were most impressed that Fore's switches could be set up quickly and easily, even on a completely untested network. In fact, Fore handled the dreaded first position in our test-dreaded because nothing generally works, everything is usually set up wrong and companies tend to look inept even when they're not-and mastered it.
Although the performance of the Fore solution was excellent, more important factors were stability, management and consistency with standards. This is where Fore really shone. Tough tasks such as being required to fail over to a slower-speed network while running protected traffic were easy for Fore, but nearly impossible for some others. Other tasks, while not as tough, were accomplished quickly and easily. Even problems with setting up and configuring ATM switches and cards, which are often the key points of user hostility, were handled well by Fore.
Although it's true that Fore had some tough competitors, only 3Com and Cabletron were able to deliver world-class solutions that even came close to Fore. Because they were that good, we're bestowing the InternetWeek-Approved award upon 3Com and Cabletron. In reality, you'd be safe with any of these three solutions, and you'd find that they would probably fit your network.
There's no question that these top three contenders were good. However, this time around, we're bestowing the coveted Best of Breed award upon Fore.
-Wayne Rash
Copyright ® 1998 CMP Media Inc.
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