New Juniper Router Touts 640G bps Rates

Juniper Networks Inc., upping the ante in its competitive battle with Cisco Systems Inc., this week launched a new line of Internet routers that it says are the fastest in the market.

The Sunnyvale, Calif., company introduced the first router in its T-series family, its T640 Internet Routing Node, aimed at service providers and an upgrade to its M160 router with four times the capacity. The T640 was previously code-named Gibson.

Juniper claims that the T640 can handle a bandwidth density greater than four times that of its competitors. The focus is on improving scaling to terabits of connectivity and on routing at the core of the Internet.

The new router family is incorporating Junipers Matrix technology, which provides a two-way architecture for better scaling. The T640 enables 640G bps through the customer-facing ports and provides for 1280G bps through the rear of the chassis with an extension. In its labs, Juniper is demonstrating that with the Matrix technology eight or more T640s could be connected in an Internet Routing Matrix to deliver 10 or more terabits of throughput. The company didnt specify when the interconnected solution would ship. The single-chassis T640 is available now.

Juniper customers began deploying the router at the end of last year. Those customers include Verio Inc., France Telecom Research and Development, and the National Science Foundations TeraGrid Project. The next-generation Internet2 Abilene network also has selected the T640.