Procket Networks today announced significant new performance and feature enhancements to its PRO/8801 and PRO/8812 series routing platforms, including new capabilities in system management, network security, and system availability. PRO/1 Modular Service Environment Release 2.2, available immediately, allows network operators to deploy IPv6 based services along side current IPv4 services with zero-compromise performance.
With the new enhancements, Procket now supports simultaneous IPv4 and IPv6 throughput of 960 Gbps in the PRO/8812 and 80Gbps in the PRO/8801. In recent third-party tests, the PRO/8801 platform demonstrated line rate forwarding of IPv6 traffic across four OC-192c interfaces on a single line card. These tests were designed to stress the system with both minimum packet sizes as well as a typical blend of Internet traffic. The tests verified wire speed performance across the board.
"Network operators worldwide are looking to IPv6 as a way to address scalability, security, and management issues with today's networking protocols. However, they have traditionally been forced to limit the scope and scale of IPv6 deployments because of performance limitations in their legacy platforms. Lack of wire-speed IPv6 performance is an issue delaying the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 based services, especially for our Asian customers," said Cary Hayward, director of marketing for Procket Networks.
At the heart of this performance is Procket's advanced PRO/Silicon technology -- a suite of custom built VLSI chips that enable high speed networking performance while supporting the rich suite of features that operators deploy in their networks. The new software from Procket leverages the programmability of these chips to enable new levels of network performance on currently deployed platforms.
In addition to the new IPv6 enhancements, PRO/1 Modular Service Environment now includes a number of other significant features, including:
- Substantial performance improvements to Procket's Policy Control List feature -- providing wire-speed throughput for 2500 line access lists over four OC192c interfaces, giving greater flexibility in network security.
- MPLS facility based fast reroute, providing near-instant recovery for failed links in the network.
- Enhanced high availability features for the Route Processor modules in the PRO/8812 routing platform.
- Statistical Packet Reporting enabling per-flow industry-standard accounting of network traffic, giving customers enhanced visibility into their networks and powerful security monitoring capability.
- Multicast enhancements including Bidirectional PIM, enabling high bandwidth many-to-many communications, increasingly found in the enterprise and financial communities.