ProCurve Networking aboard International space station

New Delhi, Apr 17 (ANI/Business Wire India): ProCurve Networking by HP, today announced that the Columbus module aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, which recently docked with the EADS Astrium's International Space Station (ISS), carries on board an Ethernet local area network (LAN) built on ProCurve 2524 switch, making it the first commercial switch in space.

Selected for performance, reliability, manageability and resistance to radiation, the ProCurve 2524 Ethernet switch provides scientists on board the Columbus module the maximum research possibilities in a zero-gravity environment.

Rolf Schmidhuber, Columbus data management system engineer for EADS Astrium space transportation said: "Inside the ProCurve switch 2524, a central switch fabric handles the majority of tasks while switches from other manufacturers tend to distribute across a number of chips. By using significantly fewer chips on the circuit board, this proved much more advantageous to us, as the fewer components present, the lower the susceptibility to radiation and mechanical duress during the launch into space. This was a key reason why ProCurve beat the competition."

On board Columbus, the LAN, powered by the ProCurve 2524, and a data management system connect the research module internally, allowing uninterrupted data exchange between the ISS and its communications systems.

"To put it simply, ProCurve was the only networking vendor whose switches offered us the level of reliability and performance required to handle the intense demands on board the Columbus," added Schmidhuber.

"This is the first time in the history of space travel that a commercial Ethernet LAN is operating in space. ProCurve is honoured and proud that its solution has been chosen among strong competitors. It is a vote of confidence in the reliability, high-performance, flexibility and adaptability of ProCurve's switching technology," said Louis Au, ProCurve Networking Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific and Japan.

"ProCurve is also a preferred networking solution provider of Indian education and research community for several milestone projects. This also includes supplying high performance network equipment for space research," added Louis.

ANI