FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Beth Morrissey
Wellfleet Communications
1-508-436-3624
WELLFLEET DELIVERS INDUSTRY'S FIRST STACKABLE ROUTER FOR
A BROAD RANGE OF GROWTH-ORIENTED NETWORK ENVIRONMENTS
-- Provides Cost-Effective Routing Solution for Departmental, Regional, and
Large Remote Office Environments --
CANNES, France, October 5 -- Wellfleet Communications today unveiled the Access Stack Node, the industry's first routing solution based on a revolutionary new stackable architecture. The Access Stack Node is focused on providing highly cost-effective, growth-oriented routing solutions for medium-sized offices and departments.
Available for immediate shipment, the Access Stack Node operates individually or in a stack as a single router. The Access Stack Node scales up to four units linked together using Wellfleet's Stack Packet Exchange (SPEX[`]) expansion interconnect. Each stack can support from 2 to 24 interfaces, providing connectivity for Ethernet, Token Ring, Synchronous, ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI), and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) networks. In the future, Wellfleet will also offer integrated Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) connections.
The Access Stack Node is based on the high-performance and highly scalable symmetric multiprocessor architecture and component technologies first developed for Wellfleet's industry-leading Backbone Node router/bridges. With the Access Stack Node, each unit in a stack configuration appears as a single slot in a multislot routing platform. This highly scalable architecture allows for system forwarding performance of up to 200,000 packets per second.
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"The Access Stack Node combines Wellfleet's leading price and performance advantages with flexible configuration capabilities to provide a routing solution for cost-sensitive users in growth-oriented network environments such as departmental, regional, and large remote sites," stated Gary Bowen, senior vice president, marketing and field operations at Wellfleet.
"The product complements Wellfleet's high-performance Backbone Node and remote site Access Node by satisfying the expansion requirements of today's departments and regional offices, as well as protecting network investments and simplifying network manageability," continued Bowen. "Additionally, the Access Stack Node's highly scalable modular design addresses the remote LAN and IBM SDLC connectivity requirements by cost-effectively connecting medium-sized remote offices with an enterprise backbone while ensuring the highest levels of network availability and performance."
The Access Stack Node architecture provides unique investment protection for growing internetworks. Network managers can cost-effectively deploy the configuration they require today, as well as accommodate future network growth by stacking multiple Access Stack Nodes. Later, if network requirements dictate, a stack configuration can be replaced and strategically redeployed where needed, either as a complete stack or as separate routers dispersed throughout the network.
Like Wellfleet's entire product family, the Access Stack Node's distributed, fault-resilient software architecture offers on-line dynamic reconfiguration and software fault isolation and recovery to support high-availability routing required by departmental, regional, and remote site applications. In addition, hardware fault isolation and on-line operational servicing (hot swap) capabilities allow the network operator to service a single unit within a multiple unit stack configuration without affecting the operation of the rest of the system and the networks supported.
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A full range of routing and bridging protocol support is provided by the Access Stack Node, including TCP/IP, DECnet Phase IV, OSI, Novell IPX, Banyan VINES, AppleTalk Phase 2, XNS, Native Mode LAN, Transparent Bridge, Translation Bridge, and other extensive features. Wellfleet supports IBM integration through industry-standard Source Route Bridge and Data Link Switching (DLSw) for Token Ring, Ethernet and SDLC, and also provides support for Transparent Sync Pass-Thru.
Satisfying remote site availability requirements, the Access Stack Node enhances internetwork connectivity to remote sites by supporting integrated dial-up services. Extensive dial back-up, dial-on-demand, bandwidth-on-demand and alternate path routing services allow the Access Stack Node's synchronous interfaces to automatically respond to varying network conditions, ensuring remote site connectivity over the wide area to the central site. These synchronous interfaces provide support for Frame Relay, Dial-up Services, X.25, PPP, SMDS, ATM DXI, and Wellfleet HDLC Encapsulation.
Value-added traffic management features, including Data Compression, Uniform Traffic Filters, Traffic Prioritization, and Multiline Circuits, allow a network operator to optimize the flow of internetwork traffic to ensure Access Stack Node network bandwidth availability.
The Access Stack Node is easily configured, monitored, and controlled through Site Manager, Wellfleet's SNMP-based, point-and-click node management software. Using Site Manager, the network operator can manage multiple stacked Access Stack Nodes as a single routing platform.
"The highly flexible, symmetric multiprocessor architecture of the Access Stack Node simplifies the management of a growing internetwork by allowing the network operator to easily add an additional unit, not a new router," added Bowen.
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Additionally, Wellfleet's EZ-Install, EZ-Update, and EZ-Configure features simplify Access Stack Node installation, configuration, and maintenance by eliminating the need for on-site technical expertise.
Wellfleet's Access Stack Node is available today, starting at $5,000. U.S. for base unit configurations.
Wellfleet Communications (NASDAQ: WFLT) is a leading vendor of highly available, high-performance information internetworking products and related services. In partnership with many organizations, the company builds sophisticated internetworks for delivering mission-critical information and services. Founded in 1986, Wellfleet had revenues of $384 million for its fiscal year ended June 1994.
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