LAS VEGAS -- Several vendors last week announced or displayed upcoming products aimed at boosting Ethernet speeds tenfold in enterprise and service provider networks.
Although some of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet products previewed at NetWorld+Interop 2001 are six months to a year away from delivery, they could be used to boost bandwidth across campus backbones and support applications such as storage access over IP.
Nortel Networks announced a single and dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet module for its Passport 8600 switch intended primarily for metropolitan-area service provider networks. The module will be available early next year, with pricing to be determined later this year.
The only vendor to announce pricing for 10 Gigabit so far has been Foundry Networks, with its single-port blade, starting at $45,000. Nortel officials indicated that this price will likely be the average for most vendors' entry-level products.
Nortel expects such high prices to scare off most enterprise customers.
"If you're a vendor trying to sell 10 Gigabit to an enterprise, and customers see a $50,000 interface, they're going to think you have rocks in your head," said Phil Edholm, CTO for Nortel's Enterprise Solutions group, comparing 10 Gigabit Ethernet to where Gigabit Ethernet was in 1997 -- almost nonexistent in corporations.
Hewlett-Packard is also getting into the 10 Gigabit Ethernet act. The company displayed a 10G bit/sec network interface card (NIC) for its high-end HP 9000 N-class Unix server. The NIC, which is a year away from release, is being developed for HP by Nortel's optical components group. The card supports optical connections from 300 meters to 40 kilometers.
Target applications include Web servers attached to large optical Internet pipes. The card could also be used in an enterprise data center to attach an HP 9000 to a 10 Gigabit switch that aggregates Gigabit Ethernet uplinks from wiring closets. Very high-speed server-to-server data backup is another possible use.
The new NIC caught the eye of several show attendees, including Glen Dasmalchi, director of engineering at Chelsio Communications, a start-up that develops TCP/IP acceleration products. He could see using such a product for large Web servers that receive an enormous amount of hits per day.
Also at the show, Cisco displayed its OSR 7600 optical switch outfitted with a single-port, 10 Gigabit module. A Cisco product manager said the blade could be used by metropolitan-area network providers for aggregating Gigabit links to Ethernet WAN subscribers. It could also be used for accessing data from a storage-area network via IP in a firm. Release of the module is four to six months away, with pricing to be determined at release time, Cisco says.
The firm showed a Catalyst 6500 with 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology earlier this year.
One N+I attendee said he anticipated the proliferation of 10 Gigabit, but isn't interested until interoperability is proven among vendors.
"They're still a year away from [ratifying] the standard," for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, said David Brock, an independent network consultant. "I only work with standards-based products."
