networkZONE Products for the week of December 22, 2003
LVL7 Says…
LVL7's IP Software Platforms Enable Development Of
Switches, Routers, On Merchant Silicon, Running Linux or VxWorks
LVL7 Systems has announced that its award-winning FASTPATH software
is now available fully integrated with VxWorks and Linux operating systems
as well as PowerPC, MIPS and ARM CPUs and merchant silicon from leading
companies including Broadcom, Infineon, Intel, Marvell and SwitchCore. The
new FASTPATH 2000 family of product platforms along with enhanced testing,
certification and project management enable enterprise focused Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to leverage this high level of integration
to rapidly deliver turnkey production ready Ethernet switching products
to market. Service provider OEMs developing Metro and Access products can
leverage the same level of integration with a set of flexible software modules
available within FASTPATH as a foundation on top of which enhanced applications
and value added customization can be added, reducing development costs and
significantly improving time to market of complex multi-function products.
FASTPATH Software Platforms for Ethernet Systems
FASTPATH software is now available as a fully integrated, production ready
family of product platforms for Enterprise OEMs, Original Design Manufacturers
(ODMs) and Contract Manufacturers (CMs) building 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet
solutions.
All FASTPATH platforms offer a customizable network management capability including a graphical user interface, which allows each OEM to have a unique look-and-feel for their product.
Turnkey Services
To address the need for a single point of contact to manage new product
introduction, LVL7 also offers turnkey services including customization,
feature development, management branding and execution through product deployment.
More than 7,500 feature and network system tests are performed as part of
a certification, interoperability and quality assurance program that guarantees
that new products are production ready. LVL7 has established development
relationships with major ODMs and CMs in Asia and North America that provide
production ready hardware for next generation Ethernet networking products.
These turnkey, production-ready systems enable OEMs to rapidly bring new
products to market with virtually zero development risk.
"The level of integration and the extent to which we verify and system test products are outstanding value propositions for our customers," said Geoff Bula, LVL7's VP of Engineering. "Our turnkey managed L2/L3/L4 platforms allow OEMs to bring Ethernet switching products to market within sixty to ninety days".
FASTPATH Offering for Service Provider OEMs
In addition, FASTPATH is available as a family of source code modules that
are ported, integrated and optimized with device drivers for industry-leading
networking silicon, CPU and operating systems to deliver the core Ethernet
IP functionality required for Metro and Access products. By leveraging the
flexible FASTPATH software architectural abstraction layers, APIs and networking
modules, Service Provider OEMs can rapidly deploy their own high value,
differentiating, customized functionality and enhancements. Service Provider
OEMs will typically save more than one year in Ethernet networking system
development by utilizing FASTPATH as a foundation for their Access and Metro
products.
The FASTPATH integrated source code modules include Switching, Routing, Quality of Service, CLI and Web Management, Multicast and BGP-4.
FASTPATH Applications
The FASTPATH software rich feature set plus flexible software architecture
that enables OEMs to easily add differentiating features and value allows
FASTPATH to address a broad range of applications.
analogZONE Says . . .
I've followed LVL7 for a number of years now, and it's been rather interesting to watch them evolve from a supplier of basic protocol stacks to their current market thrust into turnkey solutions. In many ways, they fill a very important market niche for "configure & ship" IP switch software which was left somewhat empty when RadLAN was acquired by Marvell earlier this year. Their move appears to be a wise one, especially considering the commoditization of even mid-level IP switching and routing gear, that is driving manufacturers to buy merchant silicon and use "off-the-rack" software solutions to cut costs and time-to-market. They also go RadLAN one better by extending their reach beyond enterprise market to access and carrier markets.
Like earlier releases, LVL7's new platform, the Fastpath 2000 family is a collection of tools and modules designed to enable quick-turn development of L2/L3 Gigabit Ethernet switching/routing products that can be customized to add features and functions as needed. It includes a L2, L3/L4 package, as well as L2-4 products, and a management module that runs with all three packages. You can get optional modules to support multicast, and BGP-4 protocol for route table exchanges.
While this significantly expands the offerings of their earlier product series, the other big news here is that in addition to the venerable PowerPC, their management and supervisory software now also runs on StrongARM and MIPS-based host processors.
And speaking of silicon diversity, you now have your choice of running FastPath on perhaps the widest arrays of lots of merchant switching silicon in the industry. Since my last review a year ago, they've further expanded the spectrum of chips they support to include Broadcom , Marvell, Intel, Infineon, and SwitchCore. This allows you to apply virtually the same scalable software package across a variety of products ranging from workgroup switches to access provider-sized routers.
This hardware-independence is in good part due to LVL7's MasterDriver architecture that enables their software to be easily ported to ASSPs, ASICs, custom ASICs, NPs and FPGAs. FastPath also plays well with nearly any management software thanks to an abstraction layer that allows developers to use either SNMP protocols or access low-level functions via a web call. 3rd-party user interfaces can also use a built-in web-based GUI, or simple CLI. Developers will also appreciate the option to either purchase pre-developed binary code for a specific application, or get their hands on the source code -- something most other companies don't do.
Another thing that's always impressed me about LVL7 is its emphasis on certification & testing. They now use 7500 separate test cases to verify their hardware and software works in all normal and "corner" conditions, and that they maintain performance throughout. They have structured their software to support incremental and whole-system design verification from the beginning of a program through every stage of development. All this work on the backend of the development cycle means that you'll get rapid, full certification and verification of production-ready systems when it comes time to put together your next product.
The flexibility and reliability offered by FastPath makes it a good candidate for Enterprise-class products, including unmanaged workgroup L2+ switches, right up through chassis-based L 2 / 3 /4 switches and routers. Kinkier enterprise applications would include 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi gateways and IP PBXs. We'll also probably find LVL7 getting its fingers into metro and access equipment such as data center blade server switches, VDSL and Gigabit Ethernet line cards, as well as the switch guts in wireless base stations.
One of the only beefs I have with LVL7 is that I'd love them to expand their support to include some of the other innovative silicon out there such as Vitesse and PMC-Sierra. But given the resources necessary to port a large body of software to a new host, I'm sure they are doing the best they can and that they will consider adding more as resources permit -- and markets demand.
Data sheets (or something like that)
| |