Cisco unveils copper Gigabit gear

by Phil Hochmuth

May 23, 2001 —

Cisco Systems Inc. this week joined the parade of vendors that have recently released low-cost, stackable copper Gigabit Ethernet switches. Cisco's new gear is intended for building the network backbones of small firms and for aggregating wiring closet switches in larger enterprises.

The new products could help users boost the speed of their enterprise wiring closets and server farms to Gigabit Ethernet over Category-5 copper cabling instead of fiber-optic cabling, which can cost twice as much as copper wire.

In a joint announcement with Intel, Cisco introduced two 1000Base-T stackable switches, a copper Gigabit Ethernet blade for the Catalyst 4000 and a copper gigabit interface converter (GBIC). Cisco and Intel Corp. also announced successful interoperability testing with Cisco switches and 1000Base-T network adapters from Intel, as well as a joint marketing program where the two companies will package Cisco switches and Intel copper Gigabit Ethernet NICs together.

Cisco's new Catalyst 2950 series of switches includes four workgroup boxes with 24 ports of 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet and either one or two copper Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. The switches range in price from US$1,500 to $3,000. Cisco's Catalyst 3550-12T is a 10-port, 1000Base-T Layer 3 switch with two Category-5 GBIC slots for uplinks to a backbone. The box is intended for server farms or for aggregating Catalyst 2950 series switches together in a wiring closet, and it costs $10,000. Cisco also introduced a 24-port 1000Base-T blade for the Catalyst 4000, for users looking for a modular copper gigabit product for a data center. The blade costs $9,000. Also unveiled was a 1000Base-T GBIC which can fit in the Catalyst 2950 and 3550 switches, priced at $400.

Cisco was one of the first companies to introduce 1000Base-T products when it unveiled modules for the Catalyst 4000 and 6000 a year ago. Since then, a slew of companies such as 3Com, Alcatel, Asant? and Netgear have joined the copper Gigabit market with eight-, 10- and 12-port 1000Base-T boxes with per-port costs as low as $250.

According to analyst firm International Data Corp., copper Gigabit Ethernet will help boost Gigabit Ethernet technology as a whole. The firm predicts that 1000M bit/sec port shipments will quadruple over the next four years, from an estimated 13.1 million worldwide port shipments this year to 55.2 million ports in 2004.

All Cisco copper gigabit products are available now.

Network World