Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc’s BBN Communications in Cambridge, Massachusetts has launched the T/300 Packet Switching Node, based on a multiprocessor architecture and designed to enable users to construct high speed backbones while ensuring cost-effective reliability and availability. It supports host and trunk interfaces at line speeds up to T1 and E1, and initially supports up to 77 ports – 14 trunk ports and 63 X25 host ports. The T/300 is compatible with existing BBN products and in its next release of T/300 software, BBN will include support for a trunk-side Frame Relay interface. The system consists of a chassis, one or two System Resource Boards, one to five Serial Input-Output Processors, line adaptors, and disk and power subsystems. Each System Resource Board provides up to 6Mb of global memory, accessible by all the interface processors and used to store network tables, node structures and data buffers. The interface proc essors have have dedicated 40MHz processors for line input-output and a 20MHz processor for applicat ions. The company does not say which chips are used, but it has been using the Motorola 88000 RISC. Dynamic Adaptive Routing software chooses the fastest available path on a per-packet basis throughout every call. The T/300, out now, is $45,000 for an entry-level system.
