Hsinchu, Taiwan- Accton Technology Corporation of Taiwan (TAIEX: 2345, www.accton.com), the company that makes partnership work, announced today its newest managed Ethernet switch, the Accton ES4550.The new ES4550 was designed to turn unmanaged data networks into intelligent, multimedia-rich converged Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructures with huge performance advances and built-in economic benefits.This new L2 fully-managed 48-port Gigabit switch with two10Gigabit uplinks will begin volume shipping at the end of September, 2005 to existing OEM customers.Powered by a Gigabit Ethernet single chip offering from Agere Systems, the ES4550 stands alone as the only product of its type on the market that provides such a high port density with an efficient chip solution.
Because the Agere chip, ET4K, combines so many functions on one chip, Accton’s ES4550 provides the lowest device count switch solution available.By combining the benefits of having the lowest Failure in Time (FIT), smallest printed circuit board (PCB), and lowest power consumption of any comparable switch on the on the market today, the ES4550 has just 66 percent of the PCB size, requires 35 percent less power, and uses 50 percent fewer components—resulting in a much more reliable, lower-cost device.
The Accton ES4550 is the first in a new family of Gigabit switches being introduced by Accton: the ES4500 series.The company will begin shipping a 28-port version of the switch, with 28 Gigabit ports, four SFP slots and two 10Gigabit slots (ES4530) in November; and a series of smart switches supporting 28- and 48-port configurations early next year.Accton’s ES4550 and ES4530 both will support stacking functionality at the end of 2005.
Using Agere’s new system-on-a-chip solution, the new Accton ES4500 switch family brings economy to powerful, managed Ethernet switching.ES4500 switches bring massive performance improvement at much lower prices, enabling the transformation of today’s unmanaged data networks into much more intelligent, multimedia-rich converged infrastructure. The improvement in performance and cost is likely to speed migration from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet networks across virtually all business applications. Furthermore, this solution will be a catalyst for profound change in the way companies run their businesses going forward, how effectively they compete, and how productive and efficient they can become.
This significant performance improvement the ES4500 switches offer will have widespread repercussions in networks within businesses worldwide. Because of current network limitations, many are unable to distinguish between voice, video and data Internet Protocol (IP) traffic. This forces the businesses to have dedicated and separate data and voice networks. The technology built-in to the new ES4500 family of switches brings the intelligence to dynamically recognize these services, thus enabling their convergence onto a single, reliable and efficient multimedia-aware infrastructure. As a result, the ES4500 family of switches is poised to be a catalyst for rapid acceleration in the replacement of Private Branch Exchange with IP telephones in businesses, among other advances.
This convergence also eliminates the need to operate and maintain costly, wire-intensive, technology-diverse and complex networks, so that time-consuming and costly moves, adds, and changes of employee equipment within corporate networks will become transparent to end-users.This increases their mobility, thus increasing productivity and improving customer responsiveness.
As the only high-density Gigabit Ethernet devices that maintain traffic up to 1,000 megabits per second (wire-speed deterministic performance) for each end-user, the new ES4500 switching solution raises the bar for network infrastructure, making new modes of working possible, including virtual desktop and workspace sharing applications, and seamless store and restore of important data across the business—key for business continuity and disaster recovery.
Accton is currently taking orders from OEM/ODM customers for the ES4550 and ES4530 switches.The ES4550 will begin volume shipment in late September, 2005; the ES4530, in November.
About Accton Technology Corporation
Accton Technology Corporation (TAIEX: 2345) is a global premier provider of networking and communications solutions for top tier networking, computer, and telecommunications vendors.Leveraging its advanced software applications and state-of-the-art ASIC, Accton collaborates with its strategic partners to design, develop and manufacture innovative, leading-edge technologies.The company’s constantly-evolving core technology, highly-qualified employees and aggressive cost engineering make it possible for Accton to deliver superior products that are as affordable as they are robust.For more information about Accton and its subsidiaries, visit www.accton.com.
