Juniper Networks on Oct. 18 2006 will seek to silence critics who complain about the company's lack of an Ethernet edge aggregation switch for service providers by launching its new X-Series product line.

The X-Series switch/router is built to optimize both Layer 2 and Layer 3 functions and provide high-density Ethernet interfaces. The 14-slot X960 chassis can accommodate up to 480 Gigabit Ethernet ports through a 40-port line card. It can also support 48 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports through a four-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet line card, according to sources close to Juniper, who asked not to be identified.

The product line is aimed at shoring up Juniper's position among Metro Ethernet service providers. The financial analysts are all over Juniper's back to get into the Layer 2 switching space.

It also provides a range of QOS (quality of service) features, including support for up to eight queues per port and up to four scheduling priorities as well as per-port shaping. The X960 will run the Junos operating system software.

Juniper is also planning to add a six-slot chassis to the X-Series line that can accommodate existing X960 line cards and other components. Also in the works for a later release are fine-grained queuing line cards supporting per-VLAN (virtual LAN) queuing. Further down the road, Juniper also plans to add support for SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) interfaces as well as a 32-port Gigabit Ethernet line card, sources said.