5/10/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. might control an overwhelming share of the enterprise switching market -- according to some market research estimates, anyway -- but that doesn't seem to faze any of its competitors.

Consider Foundry Networks, which this week announced new switch offerings designed for small- and medium-sized business (SMB) buyers.

Foundry's FastIron LS 624 and 648 10/100/1000 Mbps network edge switches boast support for optional 10GbE uplinks. Analysts like what they see in Foundry's latest enterprise switching gambit, although they question just how much of an impact these offerings will actually have.

"It rounds out the company's edge switch product line with products suited for small- to medium-sized businesses and data centers," said Michael Brandenburg, an analyst for enterprise network systems with consultancy Current Analysis. But while the LS 624 and LS 645 "have features that make them very appealing to the small to medium-sized business market, they do not represent a technological or strategic breakthrough," Brandenburg added.

Both switches boast "solid" security and policy management features, Brandenburg continued -- including 802.1x authentication support, dynamic VLAN and ACL assignment, ICMP Smurf and TCP SYN protection, ACL-based mirroring, and Foundry's IronShield 360 intrusion detection system.

There's another wrinkle here, too, Brandenburg pointed out: an "edge-switches-should-be-seen-but-not-heard" pitch that could make both offerings more palatable to space-conscious SMB buyers: "The LS 624 and 648 have a compact form factor and a low-noise fan that make them suitable for installation in businesses with very limited (or even no) wiring closet space," he said.

The SMB segment is the sweet spot, according to Brandenburg. "Foundry should definitely target this toward service providers for deployment with their customer premises equipment for managed services. [These switches are] ideally suited for supporting customer premises equipment in small to medium-sized businesses," he indicated. "As the needs of a company grow, these switches can be easily pushed to the network edge, bringing the management and security features of [Foundry's] IronShield with it."

In terms of impact, Foundry's move could cause competitors, including Cisco, to reassess, and perhaps tweak, their own offerings, Brandenburg concluded.

"The main benefits derived from the LS 624 and 648 switches only apply to customers willing to migrate to a complete Foundry architecture," he said. "Competing switching vendors should reassess their own product lines to ensure their equivalent switches support similar features to the FastIron products, most notably 10 GbE uplink ports." --Stephen Swoyer