Peter Kiewit Institute Selects Foundry Networks Solutions for High Performance Network Redesign26 May 2006
Foundry Networks(R), Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced that The Peter Kiewit Institute, home to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Engineering and Technology and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's College of Information Science and Technology, has taken the next steps to future-proof its network by upgrading its existing Foundry-powered infrastructure to one of the most powerful networks in academia today. By leveraging the Foundry BigIron(R) RX and FastIron(R) SuperX(TM) in their next-generation network, The Peter Kiewit Institute is able to increase the recruitment of top-tier technology focused students, boost productivity of their existing students and faculty, and create a future-ready network architecture to meet their needs for years to come.
The University of Nebraska's Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI), a collaborative partnership with business, industry and government, is designed to help meet the needs of the nation's technology and engineering firms by providing top- flight education to highly talented students interested in pursuing careers in fields critical to our nation's economy.
"In order to deliver a world-class educational experience, students must have the latest tools available to them, and that's where Foundry plays a significant role," said PKI executive director Winnie Callahan.
The PKI network is designed to meet not only today's needs, but also tomorrow's innovations by using Foundry's BigIron RX-16 in the core with redundant connections to the FastIron SuperX switches located in the edge network closets. Each edge closet can manage and supply 20Gbps to 60Gbps of network data access to the core. By leveraging the FastIron SuperX, all switch ports can operate at gigabit speeds and can be incrementally upgraded to support Power over Ethernet (PoE) without the need for a forklift upgrade. Advanced network intelligence features like traffic accounting, always-on intrusion detection and network remediation all play integral roles in the operation of the network.
"It's all about performance, service and value," said PKI's network administrator Chris Cox. "We migrated from a dual core architecture to single core BigIron RX which not only provides PKI incredible performance but also reduces our total cost of ownership (TCO) by 50 percent."
"The exceptional and dedicated attention provided by Foundry's customer service has allowed us to make this migration painless and expeditious, allowing us to focus on our core business. Our philosophy, like that used by Peter Kiewit himself in describing his goal for his company, is not to be the biggest, just the best and Foundry has helped make that a reality," stated John Callahan, the director of technological infrastructure for PKI.
"We are extremely pleased to continue our strong relationship with the Peter Kiewit Institute and implement a best-of-breed network that enables them to expand and enhance their network performance experience for both students and faculty," said Bob Schiff, vice president and general manager for Foundry Networks enterprise business unit. "The Peter Kiewit Institute is an excellent example of a visionary organization that is deploying Foundry's scaleable, highly available, and future-proofed solutions to empower their ongoing networking initiatives."
The BigIron RX-Series family includes three chassis models, each supporting redundant management, redundant switch fabric and redundant power supply components with a full compliment of switching and routing functions. The BigIron RX-4 is a compact four rack unit (RU) high switch. It supports four half-slot port modules and has a switching capacity of 384 Gbps. The BigIron RX-8 is seven rack units in height, supports eight half-slot port modules and has a switching capacity of 768 Gigabits per second. The BigIron RX-16 is fourteen rack units in height, supports sixteen half-slot port modules, and has a switching capacity of 1.536 terabits per second. With its low profile design, the BigIron RX-16 switch can be stacked three high in a single seven-foot rack providing for as many as 192 wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The BigIron RX-Series is designed to meet the needs of enterprise customers with starting configurations of 24 10/100/1000 Mbps ports in 4 RU space to 64 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports all using common technology. The introduction of the 48 port 10/100/1000 Mbps module offers an ideal solution for high performance environments, including Internet exchanges, data centers and high-performance computing installations, which will be able to take advantage of this massive density and horsepower.
Foundry's FastIron SuperX Layer 2/3 modular switch is purpose built to deliver high performance Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gigabit Ethernet, and advanced networking solutions for tomorrow's mission critical and today's increasing security needs. Foundry's FastIron SuperX is built with high-performance ASICs to deliver high-density Gigabit Ethernet that can include Power over Ethernet and 10-Gigabit Ethernet. Foundry's SuperX comes with IronWare(TM) which comes with advanced Layer 2 features such as Foundry's award winning Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), and full Layer 3 features such as Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4). Foundry's SuperX series delivers a new level of flexibility, greater reliability, advanced end-user and networking security, extensive redundancy, and a new level of high performance. The FastIron SuperX delivers an increased return on investment (ROI) and a much lower TCO for both Enterprises and Service Providers.
About Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of high-performance enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security and Web traffic management solutions, including Layer 2/3 LAN switches, Layer 3 Backbone switches, Layer 4 - 7 application switches, wireless LAN and access points, access routers and metro routers. Foundry's 9,700 customers include the world's premier ISPs, metro service providers, and enterprises, including e-commerce sites, universities, entertainment, health and wellness, government, financial and manufacturing companies. For more information about the company and its products, call 1.888.TURBOLAN or visit http://www.foundrynetworks.com.
About The Peter Kiewit Institute
The University of Nebraska's Peter Kiewit Institute, founded in late 1996, is located in Omaha, Nebraska, has nearly 2,400 students and is a collaborative partnership between higher education and business and industry. It partners with more than 600 businesses from around the world. Scholars recruited to the Institute number more than 400 per year and are ranked among the top 3 percent of high school graduates academically in the nation.
The Institute, a 192,000 square-foot facility, boasts an exposed infrastructure, a state-of-the-art conference center built on raised flooring throughout, and residence halls for more than 600 students with private rooms and broad-band connectivity. An additional outgrowth of the Institute is a technology and incubator center with multiple facilities ranging in size from 50,000 square-feet to 80 square-feet, which helps develop entrepreneurial businesses and serve as a center to Omaha's rapidly growing hi-tech community. Conceived with the idea of bringing the best minds in the nation to Nebraska, the Institute has enjoyed continual support from community leaders, international businesses and global educational entities, which share the vision of founding board chairman Walter Scott, Jr.: "If you want to influence the future, invest in the young."
CONTACT:
Pavel Radda
Foundry Networks
+1-408-207-1332
pradda@foundrynet.com
Foundry Networks Investor Contact:
Jason Golz
Financial Dynamics
+1-415-439-4532
jgolz@fd-us.com
Source: prnewswire
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