The product's strengths, according to our judges, are its ease of integration and use. Because it can collapse the enterprise network into a two-tier design -- a high performance edge and core -- its compact form factor makes for the most efficient use of available rack space. Management of the device is quick and inexpensive, according to the company, because it utilizes the same ExtremeWare management commands used by other switches in Extreme's product line.

Its specification details include 48 copper Gigabit Ethernet ports, four ports of SFP MiniGBICs and two optional 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink ports. The Summit 400 switch fabric has a 160 Gbps capacity, supporting 101 million packets per second. It supports up to 16,000 MAC addresses, 4,000 Layer 3 forwarding database in hardware, or 64,000 routing table entries, offering flexibility to work for both wiring closet implementations and enterprise branch offices.

The device is also intended to appeal to organizations with converged networks, as it supports priority queues on every port to ensure that high priority traffic, such as voice and video traffic, get the required bandwidth when it is needed. Listed at $9,995, one judge called it "a great value for the features it delivers."

Eric B. Parizo