Intune Networks announces 100GE ports for its iVX8000 system

Intune Networks announces support for 100GE client ports on its iVX8000 distributed switch. The system, which behaves like a conventional local switch but has ports spread hundreds of miles apart, is currently being deployed in place of traditional networks to deliver flexible pools of highly-meshed connectivity.
 
John Dunne, Intune’s Chief technology officer commented, ‘Our customers are typically interconnecting devices with traffic flows up to 10Gbps. But as computing power and data consumption continue to grow, it is only a matter of time before packet flows originate at 100Gbps.’
 
The expansion of i/o (input/output) ports will also allow users to mesh traffic from multiple 10G ports in one location to a single 100G port in another, benefitting from statistical packet multiplexing across the distributed switch. This has not been possible to do at the packet level before. Conventional network architectures, built from separate switches and transport systems, can only transport similar bit rates over paths that have been ‘nailed-up’ across the network.
 
Arthur Smith, Intune’s Chief Operating Officer, said, ‘The iVX8000 uses multiple wavelengths of light as an address space, rather than a multiplexing technology, so it breaks the traditional fixed relationship between wavelengths and circuits. Packet flows can be aggregated across the optical backplane to support a range of interface speeds at the edge of the switch. We will be delivering the 100GE port during 2014, using the existing fabric and architecture.’