The three products, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, BIG-IP Link Controller, and BIG-IP 8400 Platform are available Monday.

The 8400 provides 10Gbit/sec. of throughput in Layer 4 traffic, also known as the transport layer in the Open Systems Interconnection, said Jason Needham, director of product management at Seattle-based F5. Large companies and service providers could use the device to transport extremely high traffic volumes for load balancing, Secure Sockets Layer transport and compression, he said.

Two networking analysts said the 8400 is big news for global companies seeking to move large amounts of traffic more easily. "Ten-gig networking has taken off in the data center," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc.

Foundry Networks Inc. on Jan. 12 announced two hardware boxes that will compete with the 8400, and both begin shipping next month, said Joel Conover, an analyst at Current Analysis Inc. in Sterling, Va. Cisco Systems Inc. and Radware Ltd. are expected to provide similar products, the analysts said.

The market for network traffic management products is expected to total more than US$700 million in 2006, Kerravala said. The 8400 starts at $69,995.