networks industry network switches fate acquired by dell founded ncore networks founder pk dubey naresh nigam and som sikdar defunct august 2011 headquarters san jose california united states area served worldwide parent dell website force10networks.com dell force10 formerly ncore networks force10 networks was a united states company that developed and marketed 10 gigabit and 40 gigabit ethernet switches for computer networking to corporate educational and governmental customers . it had offices in north america europe and the asia pacific region . in august 2011 dell completed the acquisition of force10 and changed the name to dell force10 . 1 in mid 2013 the force10 designation was dropped from the products in favor of the data center networking line of the dell networking brand . 2 telmar network technology of plano texas announced the acquisition of the force10 turin transport product lines from dell in may 2013 and has resumed support and development of the traverse traverseedge transaccess transnav masterseries adit wide bank and broadmore products . 3 telmar network technology inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of jabil circuit inc. of st. petersburg fl . iqor of st. petersburg fl announced in december 2013 the acquisition of the jabil telmar network technology aftermarket services business including the extended life products from alcatel decs force10 turin transport access products and will maintain the support and development of the traverse traverseedge transaccess transnav adit widebank and broadmore products supporting telecommunications companies worldwide in all applications from digital cross connect system dcs sonet sdh optical transport to network access . telmar network technology is now part of iqor inc. of st. petersburg fl . contents 1 history 1.1 founding 1.2 acquisition 2 products 2.1 ethernet switches 2.2 s series 3 architecture 3.1 chassis switches 3.2 power consumption 4 customers 5 references 6 external links history edit founding edit the company was founded by pk dubey naresh nigam and som sikdar . it was named by founder som sikdar an avid sailor after beaufort force 10 storm whole gale on the beaufort scale for wind speeds indicating a storm with high speed winds and matched their focus on 10 gigabit ethernet switching and routing products . acquisition edit in january 2009 force10 was acquired by turin networks which had previously purchased carrier access corporation and white rock networks . carrier access corporation itself had previously purchased mangrove systems and white rock networks had previously purchased seranoa networks . on july 20 2011 dell announced it intended to fully acquire force10 for an undisclosed amount . with the acquisition dell offered products for the data center 1 4 5 where dell focuses on the ethernet switches . dell force10 continued to offer their non ethernet backhaul and metro access platforms as well . products edit force10 networks has several product lines ethernet switches are marketed in four series and other networking equipment for telecommunication providers and metropolitan networks ethernet switches traverse series multiservice transport switches chassis based multi service platform offering sdh sonet services carrier ethernet and digital cross connect system 6 or cellular services . the chassis range from 6 to 20 slots with up to 95 gbps per shelf 7 www.iqormarketplace.com 8 master series a backhaul platform for mobile cellular networks . the master series exists as a two slot 1 rack unit high or a 3 ru eight slot chassis offering backhaul services for 2g to 3g gsm network 9 axxius platform a backhaul platform for both gsm and umts cellular networks over e1 sdh or t1 sonet network 10 11 adit 600 access platform for carrier grade ip networks offering an access platform for telecommunication providers to give their customers generic access to their nextgen network 12 13 transnav transnav management software managed metropolitan area networks . 14 15 ethernet switches edit the main product line for dell force10 was ethernet switches divided into four product series 16 z series datacenter distributed core switches 1 model the z9000 2 ru high with 40 gbit s qsfp ethernet ports for datacenter usage offering 2 5 tbit s switching capacity on 32 port at 40gbit s or up to 128 ports at 10gbit s using qsfp 4 sfp 10gbit s splitters . 17 18 c series datacenter core chassis based switches 2 models c150 9ru and c300 13ru for 1 and 10 gbit s e series virtualized core chassis based switches . campus office or datacenter aggregation core switches 3 models for 1 and 10 gbit s aggregation s series edge switches 8 models 1ru or 2ru for 1 and 10 gbit s ethernet 19 in january 2002 force10 released the e series e1200 switch router claiming line rate 10 gigabit ethernet switching . force10 networks hoped to expand from lan switching to midsize data centers and enterprise campus networks . force10 products included the e series family of switch routers the c300 switch the s series family of access switches and the p series security appliances . in 2007 force10 announced it had a patent relevant for 100 gigabit ethernet switching . 20 force10 networks uses netbsd as the underlying operating system that powers ftos the force10 operating system . 21 in 2013 the name ftos will be replaced by dnos as the generic operating system name for all dell networking portfolio . force10 made a donation to the netbsd foundation in 2007 to help further research and the open development community . from january 19 2012 through mid 2013 force10 products were available as dell products and newly ordered products were sold with the dell logo and colors . 22 s series edit the s series ethernet switches offered 1 gbit s or 10 gbit s ports in 1u or 2u form factor . 23 the s series start at the s25 series with 24 1gbit s ports with s25v power over ethernet s25n copper ports or s25v fibre sfp ports . apart from that the switches offer several uplink options the s50 series is very similar to the s25 except that the s50 offers 48 ports . following the s25 and s50 are several types as s55 and s60 also offering 1 gbit s access ports and 10 gbit s uplink ports where each model has a speciality such as low latency or deep data buffers s60 . the top of range switches are the s4810 24 fiber or s4820 25 copper with 48 x 10gbit s sfp s4810 or 10gbase t s4820 and 4 qsfp 40gbit s uplink ports . the s4800 series are marketed as distribution switches for both datacenter as campus networks for large networks or collapsed core switches for smaller networks . the s4800 series switches can be stacked using either 10gbit s or 40gbit s ports using fiber links or copper twinax based direct attached ports . the pass through latency ranges from 800 nano seconds for the s4810 to 3 3 micro seconds for the copper based s4820 . 23 the s4810 s4820 and the mxl or m i o swithces use the broadcom trident asic . this is the same asic as used in the dell powerconnect 8100 series but running the ftos operating system while the powerconnect 8100 series runs a broadcom built firmware . in june 2013 the s5000 series switches were announced . this switch was the first switch to display the new brand name dell networking 2 and the new name for ftos dell networking operating system or dnos . dell force10 also offers a ftos based blade switch force10 mxl 10 40 gbit s switch for their m1000e blade enclosure available since the second half of 2012 . 26 27 the mxl switch is a s4810 switch in chassis form factor offering 32 internal 10gbit s 10gbase kr ports 2 external 40gbit s uplink or stack ports and 2 expansion slots for 2 ports qsfp 40gbit s ports or 4 port 10gbit s sfp or 10gbaset copper ports for uplinks or stacking . apart from the mxl multi layer switches dell also offers the io aggregator offering 32 x 10gbase kr internal ports and 2 x 40gbit s qsfp uplink ports and 2 slots for either dual port qsfp or quad port sfp fiber or 10gbaset copper uplink ports 28 all dell force10 series ethernet switches ran the ftos or force10 operating system . architecture edit all 10 gbit s products except for the e series used the broadcom trident asics or other broadcom based asics for the 1 gbit s models . the e series used a force10 proprietary asic . all layer2 layer3 switches in a spine leaf architecture . 29 this architecture is used within a switch where the communication goes via the internal backplane and the concept of the z series uses the same system for the distributed core between the switches . 29 30 the switches that offer 40gbit s interfaces can use these ports for 40gbit s switch to switch links or split such a link in 4 x 10gbit s direct attached links or fibre optic cable to other switches or 10gbit s nic s chassis switches edit the z series and s series are 1 ru or 2 ru stand alone switches where the e and c series are chassis based switches . the chassis based switches all use a 100 % passive backplane according to the company this results in a backplane that is more energy efficient and allows to use the same backplane for much higher speeds the company uses the same backplane when the maximum speed of ports was 10gbit s as the current 40gbit s and is ready for 100gbit s. the backplane designed for their terascale switches in 2004 31 is the same as the current 2012 exascale systems . the clockspeed used on the backplane is governed by the routing or switching modules . the lack of any active components on the backplane allows this 32 power consumption edit the chassis based datacenter core switches e series uses far less power then direct competitors like the cisco nexus 7000 or the juniper ex8216 fully utilized with 1gbit s ports the force10 e1200i uses 4.77 watt per gbps throughput where the nexus uses 9.28 watt and juniper 6.15 . similar differences can also be seen when using all 10gbit s ports f10 3.34 watt per gbps nexus 7.59 watt and juniper 4.69 watt 33 customers edit force10 customers include enterprises in industries such as media financial services oil and gas web 2.0 and gaming . service providers including internet exchanges wholesale providers cable operators and content delivery providers . force10 customers include google facebook lexis nexis zynga level 3 tata communications formerly vsnl teleglobe mzima networks stealth communications 34 yahoo isohunt sega nyse euronext veritas dgc equinix cern 35 noaa university college london networks research group 36 and the baylor college of medicine . 37 references edit a b chris mellor july 20 2011 . dell buys force 10 networks storm winds to leave brocade out in the cold . the register . retrieved august 8 2011 . a b dell data center networking . web page . dell . archived from the original on july 16 2013 . telmar acquires dell s carrier transport and access business http telmarnetworkblog.com 2013 05 21 telmar acquires dells carrier transport and access business agam shah july 20 2011 . dell fills data center technology stack with force10 . computerworld . idg . retrieved august 8 2011 . larry dignan july 20 2011 . dell goes networking acquires force10 . cnet news . retrieved august 9 2011 . datasheet for the iqor telmar traverse dcs system pdf . 1 may 2013 . retrieved 28 january 2016 . dell force10 product pages on the traverse series visited 19 february 2013 datasheet for the iqor telmar traverse system pdf . 1 may 2013 . retrieved 1 january 2016 . dell force10 product page on master series visited 19 february 2013 accius 800 product page visited 19 february 2013 datasheet for