March 16, 2006 Milpitas, CA -- The London Internet Providers Exchange (Lipex) deployed Force10 Networks' S50 data center switch to build a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) peering network among five Internet exchange points.
"Our customers require reliable, high speed peering services, and to provide that we need a network that can expand while delivering consistent performance," remarks Panny Malialis, CEO of Lipex. "The Force10 S50 allows us to increase our capacity to deliver higher bandwidth peering services while introducing a new level of resiliency into the network."
The Force10 S50 switch supports 48 line-rate GbE ports and two 10-GbE uplinks, providing Lipex with enough capacity to upgrade its backbone network to 10-GbE. Lipex expects to leverage the switch's stacking capabilities to expand this capacity. Up to eight S50 units can be stacked and managed as a single "virtual switch."
"Internet exchanges like those operated by Lipex are dependent upon the performance and reliability of their networks to guarantee services to Internet providers peering at the exchange points," observes Mark Cooper, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Force10 Networks. "By connecting multiple S50 switches together into a single virtual switch, Lipex can rapidly expand its network to accommodate increasing customer demand without increasing the costs of managing the network."