3Com to roll out high-speed LAN switch

3Com has announced its highest-performance LAN switch to date, as it continues to woo large corporate users through a joint venture with Huawei Technologies.

The 3Com Switch 7700R, made by Huawei, supported throughput of up to 96Gbps and could provide 1-second fail-over capability, director of product management at 3Com, Charles Gallagher, said. The 7700R was priced as much as 25 per cent less than similar switches from Cisco Systems, he claimed.

Although users could get similar fail-over capability by buying a pair of 3Com’s existing 7700 switches, they would have to pay $US44,000 for the two devices, Gallagher said, compared with a starting price of $US25,995 for the 7700R.

3Com needed this switch to compete for business from bigger companies, according to Yankee Group analyst, Zeus Kerravala.

“3Com is doing OK — not great, but not poor — as they go through a serious company transformation,” Kerravala said.

“They’re not going to be a serious enterprise player overnight.”

The 7700R can handle Gigabit

Ethernet transmissions now and includes future support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet cards, which should appear by mid-year, according to Kerravala.

“That’s a little behind the competition,” he said.