Hammerhead Builds Bandwidth Pooling into Migration Edge Switch

Hammerhead
Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California,
introduced its multiservice edge switches designed for migrating
existing data services from ATM and Frame Relay networks onto an
MPLS backbone, while enabling Ethernet services to interwork
with existing networks. The company is targetting the
"sweet-spot of corporate data services -- the $20 billion
Frame Relay/ATM market" which need to be migrated onto MPLS
cores.



Hammerhead is leveraging a unique switch architecture that
"virtualizes" expensive system resources, enabling a
higher efficiency and service density than other Layer 2 service
aggregation platforms. Key to the design is a Distributed
Service Interworking Engine that is bi-directional, control
plane agnostic, and scales to handle thousands of fine-grained
flows. Hammerhead has developed a Bandwidth Pooling Architecture
that allows switch processing cards to be shared by physical
interface cards. The company said this innovation would free-up
switch resources that are otherwise stranded when lower-rate
interface cards are deployed in an aggregation switch. The
virtualization of forwarding processors also provides redundancy
without having to buy a separate back-up processor card for each
physical interface. Hammerhead has also implemented a dual
control plane architecture -- both ATM and MPLS running
simultaneously -- enabling carriers to execute a non-disruptive,
graceful cutover of ATM circuits onto newly deployed MPLS cores.

Hammerhead's first product, the HXS 6000, delivers scalable edge
capacity of 30 Gbps - 120 Gbps full duplex in a 1/4 rack. It
offers a mid-plane design and service-agile interfaces ranging
from T1 to Oc-192c/10GbE and FR/ATM/PPP/POS/Ethernet.
Carrier-class features include hard separation of control and
data planes, 1:1 hot redundancy of switch fabrics and
controllers, hitless software upgrades, etc. The company will be
showing the product at next month's SuperComm. Two carrier lab
trials are underway (a Tier 1 RBOC and a leading U.S.-based
network service provider) and 3 more carrier trials are planned.
http://www.hammerheadsystems.com

• Hammerhead Systems, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, raised $25 million in Series B financing, bringing its total funding to $43 million. Pequot Ventures led the round with new equity participation and Pequot General Partner Greg Rossmann joins Hammerhead's board of directors. All first round VCs participated including Mayfield, Foundation Capital, and Enterprise Partners.



• Hammerhead Systems was founded in January of 2002 by Rob Keil and John Yu. Keil previously served as VP of Marketing at optical networking start-up Zaffire, and before that spent 5 years working with the original StrataCom/Cisco engineering group. Dr. Yu previously was Director of Network Architecture at Zaffire and is credited as co-author of 10 IETF/OIF drafts on GMPLS and Optical UNI. Prior to Zaffire, Yu spent 4 years as the Principal Data Services Architect for SBC/PacBell's Frame Relay, ATM and ADSL service deployments.



• Hammerhead is headed by Joe Sigrist, who previously served as President of Lucent Technologies' Edge Access Systems division. Prior to the Lucent acquisition of Ascend, Joe was the Vice President of Product Management for Ascend's remote access business.