Force10

Dell Force10 (formerly nCore Networks, Force10 Networks), was a United States company that developed and marketed 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches for computer networking to corporate, educational, and governmental customers. It had offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. In August 2011, Dell completed the acquisition of Force10 and changed the name to Dell Force10. In mid 2013, the Force10 designation was dropped from the products in favor of the data center networking line of the Dell Networking brand, and some of the other product lines were sold.

Dell Force10 (formerly nCore Networks, Force10 Networks), was a United States company that developed and marketed 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches for computer networking to corporate, educational, and governmental customers. It had offices in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. In August 2011, Dell completed the acquisition of Force10 and changed the name to Dell Force10. In mid 2013, the Force10 designation was dropped from the products in favor of the data center networking line of the Dell Networking brand, and some of the other product lines were sold. ==Products== Force10 Networks has several product lines: Ethernet switches are marketed in four series, and other networking equipment for telecommunication providers and metropolitan networks: Ethernet switches Traverse series: Multiservice transport switches: Chassis based multi service platform offering SDH/SONET services, carrier Ethernet and Digital cross connect system, or cellular services. The chassis range from 6 to 20 slots with up to 95 Gbps per shelf, Master series: a backhaul platform for mobile/cellular networks. The Master series exists as a two-slot (1 Rack unit high) or a 3 RU - eight slot chassis offering backhaul services for 2G to 3G GSM network Axxius platform: a backhaul platform for both GSM and UMTS cellular networks over E1 {SDH} or T1 (SONET) network, Adit 600: Access platform for carrier grade (IP) networks offering an access platform for telecommunication providers to give their customers generic access to their NextGen network, and TransNav: software for the management of metropolitan area networks. ===Ethernet switches=== The main product line for Dell Force10 was Ethernet switches divided into four product series: Z series: Datacenter distributed core switches: 1 model, the Z9000, 2 RU high with 40 Gbit/s QSFP+ Ethernet ports for datacenter usage offering 2,5 Tbit/s switching capacity on 32 port at 40 Gbit/s or up to 128 ports at 10 Gbit/s using QSFP+ - 4 SFP+ 10 Gbit/s splitters. C series: Datacenter/core chassis-based switches: 2 models, C150 (9RU) and C300 (13RU) for 1 and 10 Gbit/s E series: Virtualized core chassis-based switches. campus, office or datacenter aggregation/core switches: 3 models for 1 and 10 Gbit/s aggregation S series: Edge-switches: 8 models 1RU or 2RU for 1 and 10 Gbit/s Ethernet In January 2002, Force10 released the E-Series E1200 switch/router, claiming line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching. Force10 Networks hoped to expand from LAN switching to midsize data centers and enterprise campus networks. Force10 products included the E-Series family of switch/routers, the C300 switch, the S-Series family of access switches and the P-Series security appliances. In 2007 Force10 announced it had a patent relevant for 100 Gigabit Ethernet switching. Force10 Networks uses NetBSD as the underlying operating system that powers FTOS (the Force10 Operating System). In 2013 the name FTOS will be replaced by DNOS as the generic operating system name for all Dell Networking portfolio. Force10 made a donation to the NetBSD Foundation in 2007 to help further research and the open development community. From January 19, 2012, through mid-2013, Force10 products were available as Dell products and newly ordered products were sold with the Dell logo and colors. ==Architecture== All 10 Gbit/s products, except for the E-series, used the Broadcom Trident+ ASICs or other Broadcom-based Asics for the 1 Gbit/s models. The E-series used a Force10 proprietary ASIC. All layer2 / layer3 switches in a spine/leaf architecture. This architecture is used within a switch, where the communication goes via the internal backplane and the concept of the Z-series uses the same system for the distributed core between the switches. The switches that offer 40 Gbit/s interfaces can use these ports for 40 Gbit/s switch to switch links or split such a link in 4 x 10 Gbit/s direct attached links or fibre optic cable to other switches or 10 Gbit/s NIC's ===Chassis switches=== The Z-series and S-series are 1 RU or 2 RU stand-alone switches where the E- and C-series are chassis-based switches. The chassis-based switches all use a 100% passive backplane: according to the company this results in a backplane that is more energy efficient and allows to use the same backplane for much higher speeds: the company uses the same backplane when the maximum speed of ports was 10 Gbit/s as the current 40 Gbit/s and is ready for 100 Gbit/s. The backplane designed for their Terascale switches in 2004 is the same as the Exascale systems in 2012. The clockspeed used on the backplane was governed by the routing or switching-modules, allowed by the lack of any active components on the backplane. ===Power consumption=== The chassis based datacenter core-switches (E-series) uses far less power then direct competitors like the Cisco Nexus 7000 or the Juniper EX8216: fully utilized with 1 Gbit/s ports the Force10 E1200i uses 4.77 Watt per Gbps throughput where the Nexus uses 9.28 Watt and Juniper 6.15. Similar differences can also be seen when using all 10 Gbit/s ports (F10: 3.34 Watt per Gbps, Nexus: 7.59 Watt and Juniper 4.69 Watt] ==Customers== Force10 customers include enterprises in industries such as media, financial services, oil and gas, Web 2.0, and gaming. Service providers, including Internet exchanges, wholesale providers, cable operators, and content delivery providers. Force10 customers include Microsoft, Google, Facebook, LexisNexis, Zynga, Level(3), TATA Communications (formerly VSNL, Teleglobe), Mzima Networks, Stealth Communications, Yahoo!, isoHunt, Sega, NYSE Euronext, Veritas DGC, Equinix, CERN, NOAA, University College London Networks Research Group, and the Baylor College of Medicine. ==See also== Digital cross connect system ==References== ==External links== Dell Force10 Configuration Guides and Command Line References Quick Configuration Guides - Dell Storage Wiki Force10 data center switch delivers impressive performance - Network World How does the new Force10 S60 stack up? 5 switches compared - Network World www.iqormarketplace.com

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