With network traffic growing at an exponential rate, IT administrators must constantly revisit their network design and infrastructure to keep pace with their changing business needs and service requirements.

Ethernet Technology has widely been deployed in corporate networks due to its well-understood standards, widespread availability, reliability and long-term investment protection.

Increasingly, service providers are looking to extend their Metro Area Networks (MAN) with Ethernet technology for value-added services such as Triple play (convergence of voice, video and data services) and managed IP services (bandwidth provisioning and VPN services). At the same time, they can simplify their architecture to lower their capital expenditure and operating costs. It is widely predicted that Metro Ethernet will eventually take the place of other existing services, such as ATM, Frame Relay and x.25.

To various degrees, modern enterprises are looking for multi-service networks to streamline their network operations by integrating their voice and data traffic. Most importantly, they rely on mission critical applications such as ERP or Line of Business systems to feed their operations with data for control and decision-support. To ensure traffic priority for critical applications, the corporate LAN inherently evolves towards an end-to-end managed multiple services platform with QoS and rich service capabilities.

With the advances in computing science, such as grid computing and distributive graphical applications, applications are increasingly bandwidth thirsty and require a very fast network to run efficiently.

Because of their massive usage of computing power, data centers need faster switches to interconnect their matrix of devices. More than ever, campus networks are being jammed by the proliferation of multimedia educational content.

The explosion of data creates a compelling reason for upgrading to Gigabit Ethernet in order to build a storage network at a much lower cost. For existing networks, hosts and storage devices commonly support Ethernet interface and the iSCSI stack, and thus can plug directly into an Ethernet network or IP network infrastructure. From the network perspective, iSCSI devices are regarded as typical IP or Ethernet nodes. The network infrastructure does not need to be different from a normal enterprise LAN or IP network. While other technologies tend to be prohibitively expensive in the implementation of storage networks, significant cost savings can be achieved through constructing an iSCSI SAN using mass-market Gigabit Ethernet switching devices, which are already well understood by IT administrators.

With its well-adopted industry standards, Gigabit Ethernet also offers a clear migration path and connection standards. In recent years, the massive shipment and sharp drop in price of desktop Gigabit Ethernet interfaces also creates a compelling reason for IT administration to upgrade the core layer.

While Gigabit Ethernet is a fast evolving technology, converting existing architecture is not as formidable a problem as one might imagine, especially with the support of Huawei-3Com (H3C), one of the most sophisticated IP networking vendors in the world.

H3C delivers the best of breed technology by building cutting edge technology and intelligent features into its Gigabit Ethernet product lines. This ensures the network can run multiple types of services, such as voice, video and data simultaneously without compromising on quality, reliability or security.

To protect existing investment, H3C offers a smooth upgrade path to let customers seamlessly migrate from fast to Gigabit Ethernet with its innovative two-layer network design, reducing network complexity while improving manageability. H3C also offers a comprehensive product roadmap and solutions to extend Gigabit Ethernet connection to desktop users, including wire speed connections using copper or optical interfaces.

H3C offers a wide range of Gigabit Ethernet to desktop end-to-end solutions. It features many versatile network designs, security features such as 802.1x (including Auto QoS, Auto ACL and Guest VLAN, ACL, EAD and VLAN). In addition, it is scalable for uplinks to terabit switches, has comprehensive manageability, advanced POE feature for interoperability with third party IP Phones, network intelligence such as QoS and IP/MPLS for multi-service network and built-in support for low latency service, such as Voice VLAN.

The flagship H3C S7500 series offers a chassis which supports three different switching engines whose capacity ranges from 96Gbps to 768Gbps. With its wire-speed per slot ranging from 8Gbps to 48Gbps, a signal box offers a switching capacity of 288Gbps. The S7500 series is a L2/3 line speed modular switch ideal for deploying in the aggregate layer of enterprise or MAN networks. The product boasts a broad range of service features, including abundant services cards, PoE, powerful QoS assurance for different services, advanced security management and carrier grade reliability. Acclaimed by industry experts, it is widely deployed in various countries in a number of large-scale MAN project rollouts and enterprise network upgrades.

The H3C S9500 series is a new-generation of switches that are being extensively deployed in the core layer of enterprise networks or the aggregate layer of service providers' IP MANs. It supports high density 10Gbps interface cards that provide interconnection between MANs, Campus Networks and Data Centers to construct end-to-end Ethernet, featuring low cost, high performance and high reliability to support abundant services. It also provides rich service functions, such as powerful QoS guarantee, high performance IP/MPLS and complete security management.

The H3C S5600 series are innovative switches that improve LAN operating efficiency by integrating our industry-leading technology known as Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF). Ideal for deployment as a desktop switch, S5600 series highlights are a stacking bandwidth of up to 96 Gbps, high density GE, 10GE uplinks and a hot plug power supply unit.

H3C offers a wide range of switches to build Gigabit Ethernet to desktop with varying levels of speed, security and resiliency. For higher backhaul speed, H3C S5600 series intelligent layer 2 switches with gigabit link aggregation uplink can double the uplink bandwidth to the backbone or aggregation layer. For the most demanding users, H3C S5100 series gigabit multi-layer switches with high-density GE ports and 10GE uplink ports can best accommodate their needs. Best used as a switching device at the access layer, S5100 also supports many powerful features such as QACL (QoS and ACL).

To cater for a multi service network, the H3C family supports robust voice functions such as voice VLAN and PoE (IEEE802.3af) to interoperate with third party IP phones. To further secure its products, H3C will soon initiate the Endpoint Admission Defense (EAD) solution that promises a more consolidated security strategy and proactive defense mechanism, including isolation of suspected insecure traffic for damage control.

H3C is committed to delivering the next generation Gigabit Ethernet for its customers with cutting edge multi-service, intelligent, and security features. The H3C product line delivers business value at a competitive price, backed by world class supporting services. H3C is a trusted partner in networking technology.