Ubiquiti's EdgeMax announcement just unlocked 10-gig for everyone

Ubiquiti's penchant for disrupting enterprise networking continues. This month, they're dropping the hammer on 10-gig switching with the announcement of the ES-16-XG.

EdgeSwitch 16 XG

This EdgeSwitch sports 16 SFP+ ports, and another 4 RJ45 ports -- all capable of 10 Gbps. The usual layer-2 functions like link aggregation and VLAN tagging are supported, and it also comes with limited layer-3 features with a DHCP server and static routing.

MSRP is only $599. You can expect to shell out thousands for 16 SFP+ ports on one switch from other vendors. No ETA just yet on when it will be available, though we'll have an announcement in our monthly newsletter when it is. You can subscribe for that at the bottom of our website, www.copperwifi.com (be sure to check your SPAM folder for the required email confirmation).

Ubiquiti also announced an 8-port flavor of their PoE+ EdgeSwitching family - the ES-8-150W.

EdgeSwitch 8 150W

The 8 RJ45 ports support Gigabit speeds, as well as the 2 SFP ports. Up to 150W of power is available for PoE+ and 24V Passive PoE.

This addition to the EdgeSwitch offerings has been anticipated, as Ubiquiti released an 8-port model for the UniFi family earlier this year. The unit MSRPs for $199 - same as the UniFi model (US-8-150W).

Ubiquiti's August announcement also includes some highly anticipated EdgeRouter software updates. V1.8.5 is here and offers hardware offload for packet forwarding, per-port VLAN feature, and traffic analysis and DPI support. These features are available on the ER-X, ER-X-SFP, and EP-R6.

Additionally, the alpha release of v1.9.0alpha1 is available for IT pros eager to start testing the next wave of upgrades. These feature offerings include IPsec crypto offload (ER-X, ER-X-SFP, and EP-R6), a web UI switch wizard that allows you to setup the router as a simple layer-2 switch (ER-X, ER-X-SFP, and EP-R6), and for all models, IPv6 DHCP prefix delegation configuration in the web UI setup wizard.

You can grab these software releases on Ubiquiti's Community Forum here.

As Ubiquiti continues to expand product offerings at a fraction of the cost of their competitors, do-it-yourself network administrators and IT professionals are enjoying more options. Provided the hardware works as advertised, it's a profoundly necessary trend, as IT infrastructure demands are outpacing the pool of skilled professionals available to provide services. As hardware costs are driven down, those with less experience are more able to experiment with the gear and learn how to use it.

For our part, we'll continue to post instructional videos on our YouTube channel for Ubiquiti configurations and reviews as the products become available.