Si - nett

Founded in September 2002, SiNett Corporation is focused on designing purpose-built ICs and software to power the next generation of equipment for integrated wired and wireless networks. The company’s OneEdge Switch Processor family makes it possible for network equipment OEMs to lower costs, add compelling features and offer significantly increased performance for wireless access products in the enterprise.

Background

After some initial hesitation, enterprises have begun to embrace wireless networks. Now, with concerns about standards and security largely addressed, the desire for mobility in the workplace — and the improvement in productivity it brings — is driving the demand for wireless networks and applications. At the same time, some companies view wireless as the ideal solution for providing network access for "greenfield" deployments. As a result, WLAN device shipments are exceeding forecasts.

As wireless clients and the WLANs that connect them have increased in number, the need to unify wired and wireless networks has created a substantial and growing market opportunity. Analyst groups (such as Gartner) have predicted a fundamental shift in network design as wired and wireless merge into one. In fact, several OEMs made announcements in 2004 that validate that point.

Enterprises to date have been treating WLAN networks as separate overlay networks from their wired networks, but network managers would prefer to work with a single, unified, seamless network. Users could then take advantage of traditionally wired services (such as authentication and access policy services, VPNs, intrusion detection and prevention, etc.), while accessing the network using the mode that is most appropriate to their application.

Concurrently, network equipment providers are looking for ways to add value and improve the profitability of their products, especially as first-generation WLAN devices are quickly being commoditized. While shipments for WLAN devices have exceeded forecasts, average selling prices for devices like wireless switches are falling quickly. OEMs need new, dedicated silicon technologies that allow them to build more intelligence into their products and improve performance, while maintaining margins and lowering the costs of production.

Until now, the only silicon solutions on the market that meet feature-performance requirements for unified network management were based on technology that was designed for other purposes. These solutions are costly, do not offer compelling features or performance and require a long time to develop.

To meet these market needs, SiNett has developed a completely new silicon and software platform that addresses the unique problems of managing a unified network edge.

One Edge Switch Processors

Built from the ground up to unify wired and wireless enterprise networks, SiNett’s OneEdge Switch Processor is the industry’s first single chip solution that provides high-performance wired and wireless packet processing, robust security, advanced mobility and sophisticated traffic management. OneEdge’s purpose-built silicon architecture enables network equipment OEMs to build next- generation unified access switches, WLAN switches and WLAN appliances/controllers with significant performance and cost advantages over existing solutions.

Until recently, OEMs have been required to use multiple, complex silicon components to build networking equipment that supports integrated wired and wireless networks. Members of the OneEdge Switch Processor family share a common silicon and software architecture platform. As a result, network OEMs can leverage their design investment and cost effectively build a complete product family covering a wide price/performance spectrum for WLAN and unified access switching products.

With a single-chip architecture designed from the ground up with unified networks in mind, SiNett’s OneEdge provides several significant benefits, including a dramatic increase in datapath processing —guaranteed performance of 8 Gbps (worst-case) in full duplex mode for all major functions —and a system bill of materials (BOM) which is just one third to one quarter the cost of current implementations. In addition, OneEdge is optimized for advanced services, such as mobility, voice over WLAN, and multi-mode access point support.