MORRISVILLE, N.C. – LVL7 Systems, a provider of merchant IP software for Layer 2, 3 and 4 Ethernet products announced today 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.
-- FASTPATH 2200 - A Managed Layer 2 product that features Layer 2+ applications and protocols for building advanced switching products.
-- FASTPATH 2240 - A Managed Layer 2/Layer 4 product that includes Switching and Quality of Service (QoS), featuring DiffServ, Access Control Lists and Bandwidth Provisioning.
-- FASTPATH 2300 - A Managed Layer 2/Layer 3 product that features Switching and Routing modules for advanced routing capabilities.
-- FASTPATH 2340 - A Managed Layer 2/3/4 product that combines the Switching, Routing and QoS modules.
-- The FASTPATH 310 - An optional module upgrade for IP Multicast for web services and video and audio traffic.
-- The FASTPATH 320 - An optional module upgrade for BGP-4 for routing between Autonomous Systems.
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 Management - The Management module offers a powerful Command Line Interface (CLI), complete MIB implementation and full-featured Web Server with customizable, user-friendly interfaces. Also available is a multilingual SNMP agent that allows a device to be integrated with a multitude of advanced third party monitoring, management and provisioning solutions.
-- FASTPATH Switching - The Switching module is the most comprehensive Layer 2 Ethernet offering in the market. Advanced Layer 2 protocols such as Dynamic VLANs (GVRP), Dynamic L2 Multicast (GMRP), IGMP Snooping, Double VLAN / vMAN Tagging, Multiple Spanning Trees (802.1S), Link Aggregation (802.3ad), Port Based Authentication (802.1X), Jumbo Ethernet Frames and others are provided.
-- FASTPATH Routing - The Routing module builds upon FASTPATH Switching and is ideally suited for Layer 3 devices. Protocols provided include RIP, OSPF v2, VRRP, DHCP / BootP Relay, VLAN Routing and others.
-- FASTPATH QOS - The Quality of Service module allows service provider end customers to rapidly deploy revenue-generating services. With the support of DiffServ, Access Control Lists and Bandwidth Provisioning OEMs can build systems to support Voice over IP (VoIP), wireless and Video on Demand networking services.
-- FASTPATH Multicast - The Multicast module enables applications requiring multicast packet control for optimal operation such as web services, video and audio traffic. Functionalities supported include IGMPv2, DVMRP, PIM-DM and PIM-SM.
-- FASTPATH BGP-4 - The BGP-4 module serves as an External Gateway protocol (EGP) for interconnection of Autonomous Systems (AS's), and can also serve as an Internal Gateway Protocol (IGP) for exchanging network routing information within a particular AS.
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.
-- Enterprise-class 10/100/1000 Layer 2 switches with QoS
-- Gigabit Ethernet L2/L3 Switch/Routers with Advanced QoS
-- Enterprise Wireless LAN Switches
-- PICMG and AdvancedTCA compliant switches
-- Data Center Server Blade Switches
-- VDSL Access Concentrators
-- IP-based DSLAMs
-- Ethernet in the First Mile Devices
-- Ethernet / IP Line Card for Multiservice Metro Platforms
Availability and Pricing
FASTPATH software modules and the 2000 Platform products are now available for OEMs, ODMs and CMs developing advanced Ethernet switching products.