ADTRAN Inc. announced ActivChassis stacking technology for its NetVanta 1600 series of Gigabit Ethernet switches that enables businesses to achieve greater efficiency and flexibility in delivering bandwidth-intensive applications. ActivChassis is a software feature that allows network administrators to interconnect multiple switches and view the stack as a single, logical chassis-like system, with control and management consolidated to a single viewpoint. In order to ensure constant infrastructure uptime and deliver control efficiency in the network, ActivChassis provides backplane switching capacity up to 128 Gbps, the ability to interconnect switches scattered across a campus environment and specialized features for network high-availability.

ActivChassis enables up to eight switches to be interconnected and actively managed as a single, intelligent system, allowing users to control up to 400 switch ports across distances up to 10,000 meters. ActivChassis allows network administrators to log into the stack, view all available switch ports, make changes, and have all switches in the stack share a single configuration file and IP address. The modular design of the NetVanta 1600 series Gigabit Ethernet switches allows for a variety of flexible ActivChassis stacking architectures no matter the customer environment.

For example, backplane throughput speeds up to 128 Gbps can be achieved when used with the NetVanta 1600 Dual Stacking Module for high-speed connectivity. This configuration provides ample bandwidth for even the most demanding business applications such as enterprise-wide wireless, converged voice and data, private Cloud, high-availability network servers and more. In addition, the NetVanta 1600 Dual SFP+ Module allows ActivChassis configurations that span multiple wiring closets and even across entire campus deployments.

When configured in a ring topology, all uplinks ports are fully utilized resulting in no single point of failure in the network. In the unlikely event one switch goes down, all other switches in the stack remain connected and active for maximum network resiliency.