SUNNYVALE, Calif. - October 30, 2009 - Fortinet® - a market-leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -today announced its next-generation FortiSwitch™ family with the debut of two new 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE), ultra-low latency switching platforms that feature high portdensity and "lossless" scalability. The FortiSwitch-1000 chassis and FortiSwitch-500 platform are designed to build high-performance network fabrics such as those required by supercomputers for calculation-intensive tasks or high-speed interconnect applications for server virtualization, data center consolidation, and parallel and cloud-based computing. With a high port-density of up to 576 10 GbE interfaces per seven-foot rack, the new FortiSwitch products can scale to thousands of non-blocking ports for maximum performance in minimal data center square footage. The introduction of these FortiSwitch products complements Fortinet's existing high-end 10 GbE security infrastructure. Fortinet is also introducing the FortiSwitch-100"top-of-the-rack" switching platform as a complementary product intended to reduce overall data center deployment costs.

As bandwidth requirements in the data center core increases and 10 GbE performance is more commonplace, the underlying switching technology needs to come up to speed without adding more complexity to the network architecture or increasing the physical footprint. With FortiSwitch hardware at the core, network operators can build wire-speed, highly scalable and ultra-low latency network fabrics with the simplicity and robustness of standard Ethernet. Traffic congestion is minimized by using Fortinet'svScale™ multi-path traffic switching and dynamic congestion avoidance features, which re-route data flows to the lowest latency path in real-time and while maintaining full Ethernet compliance.

"The high-port density and high-speed switching capabilities of the new FortiSwitch platforms underscore the performance- and value-centric philosophy of Fortinet's entire product portfolio," said Anthony James, vice president, product marketing,Fortinet. "These combinedbenefits - the industry-standard Ethernet interface, Fortinet's vScale switching technology, and value-focused productline - will enable customers to more easily build a high-performance network fabric at industry-leading price points."

Dr. Bruce Allen, director of the Observational elativity and Cosmology division at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute),says: "Fortinet's FortiSwitch product uses unique technology to make a faster yet less complex switch. It enabled the Atlas computer cluster in Hannover to be the fastest Ethernet-based computer cluster in the world."

The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is the largest research center solely devoted to the whole spectrum of general relativity and beyond.The "Atlas Computer Cluster" is a part of the institute.

FortiSwitch Product Line-up