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Bandwidth In Demand

This year's show spotlights products that rev up network performance
By Mary E. Thyfault
Issue date: March 25, 1996

Network bandwidth--what it costs, how to get more of it, and which of the many available technologies can deliver it best. These crucial issues, along with several high-profile keynote speeches and product rollouts, will be the primary topics of discussion at next week's NetWorld+Interop trade show in Las Vegas.

IS managers, faced with bandwidth-hungry applications and the need to please Net-surfing users, are looking for ways to deliver more bandwidth on faster networks. Many corporate users say today's routers are "running out of steam," says Larry Blair, VP of marketing at startup Ipsilon Networks Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif.

Improving Performance
Ipsilon believes it has a way to improve networking performance with its high-speed Internet Protocol router. But it will be competing with a number of other products and technologies, including an asynchronous transfer mode router from Newbridge Networks Inc. The IP-versus-ATM battle will be just one of many that will confront technology buyers at the show-and in the real world.

In addition, Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates is expected to officially announce the release of the company's long-delayed Exchange Server messaging platform at the show. Gates is also expected to outline Microsoft's Internet strategy.

Novell chairman and CEO Robert Frankenberg's keynote speech is expected to focus on his company's push into worldwide networking and its efforts to establish a smart global network. Novell also will make several announcements about its Groupwise groupware product, including plans to formally roll out workflow capabilities based on a development pact with FileNet Corp. in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Newbridge, meanwhile, is venturing into the LAN routing market with the first ATM-based virtual router that uses an emerging standard from the ATM Forum, an industry group working on interoperability issues. Newbridge's Vivid product line relies on Forum's Multiprotocol over ATM standard. The Herndon, Va., developer is using its own pre-release version of the standard, which is expected to be complete by year's end. At that time, Newbridge plans to provide a software upgrade to be sure its router will be compatible with the standard.

Newbridge says that Vivid offers better performance and management features than
traditional routers. It lets network managers look at an e ntire end-to-end connection instead of just segments. Vivid also makes it easier to handle personnel changes. Typically, network managers have to reprogram traditional routers every time an employee moves to a different location, changing the routing table for every LAN the person is attached to. Vivid "gives users the ability to make adds, moves, and changes based on who they are rather than where they are," says Peter Rauch, assistant VP for Vivid marketing.

But Newbridge may have trouble convincing corporations to swap out their current routers for ATM devices, says John Morency, a principal with the Registry, a consulting firm in Stratham, N.H. "A lot of user dollars go into the cost of change management," Morency notes.

Eric Hinden, program manager for the Yankee Group Inc., a consulting firm in Boston, agrees. "Vivid requires a complete commitment to ATM as a strategic networking technology and a commitment to Newbridge, which is not an established vendor in th e LAN space," he says.
Some analysts believe Vivid has a better chance to succeed than Ipsilon and its high-speed router. "Vivid is the best way to meld IP with ATM, and it also supports other protocols," says Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a consulting firm in Voorhees, N.J. "Since hardly anybody runs only IP, Ipsilon is fairly useless."

Ipsilon offers IP switching by turbo-charging traditional IP routing. The company relies on ATM hardware, but doesn't use the complex layers of ATM software to handle the traffic. Some users see a benefit from building on familiar technology.

"We already know how IP works. We already know its robust," says Noemi Berry, a systems engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Products In The Works
Other networking vendors are working on similar products. Market leader Cisco Systems Inc. is expected to announce its next-generation routers, which rely on Cisco's new Netflow Swi tching and Services technology, shortly after the show. The San Jose, Calif., company's technology is similar to Ipsilon's, but will provide an alternative to ATM that's based on traditional routing, according to one source close to the company. Once it is introduced, "then you'll really see the IP-versus-ATM war," the source says.

But new networking architectures and technologies still need to be tested before corporations will bet their bottom lines on them. "Right now, it's a 'marketechture' war, rather than a war of technical substance," says consultant Morency.

NetWorld+Interop also will provide a look at the first fault-tolerant ATM switch. Until now, all ATM switching modules were based on a single hardware board, providing a single point of failure. "If anything happens to this board, the switch is dead," says Rafi Gidron, president of Scorpio Communications in New York, which makes the Stinger 5 switch.

Scorpio has designed a switching techniqu e that lets users add ports and redundancy as needed. The Stinger 5 can add up to 1.2 Gbps at a time, to a total of 5 Gbps. At the full 5 Gbps, Stinger 5 will support up to 112 non-blocking ports.

Networking vendor NHC Inc. in Montreal will demonstrate another way to get bandwidth to the desktop with a video-optimized version of its Switchex switch, which will start shipping in June. "You don't have to change your infrastructure," says Alex Brisbourne, VP of sales and marketing at NHC. "It provides you with tremendous flexibility. Decide this afternoon and have it up and running tomorrow."

General DataComm Inc. in Middlebury, Conn., announced last week that it will integrate the Switchex technology into its ATM offering.

The ambitions and intentions of the regional Bell telephone companies-and whether they can compete in the data market-will be the main topic of conversation in the wide area networking arena.
Ameritech is expected to announce that it is expa nding its ATM service offerings to include interoperability with frame relay, and a lower speed, 1.544-Mbps ATM service. "A lot of customers are interested in ATM," says Kimberly Price, Ameritech's senior product manager for fast packet services. "This lets them get their feet wet at a speed that they are currently using."

Ameritech also is venturing into a new market with an ATM LAN service that includes design, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance for a network service that provides up to 155 Mbps to the desktop. Ameritech has been offering managed services for more than two years.

Pacific Bell also will move into the LAN market with a network integration unit, and will announce a frame relay-for-SNA service at the show. Comsat, a satellite services company in Washington, will highlight the first commercial ATM service via satellite.

Management Help
In addition to addressing the need for increased bandwidth, several vendors also will bring out pro ducts intended to improve and simplify network management.

Symantec Corp. will unveil its first product suite for managing networks, the Norton Administrator Suite-Essential Edition.

The Beaverton, Ore., company's package will include features such as hardware and software inventory capability, software metering and distribution, virus protection, remote control, and desktop configuration management.

The product, available immediately, is priced at $633 for a 10-node license pack.
Meanwhile, the increasing use of wireless technologies among corporations will draw a lot of attention. Several companies will show off the latest in high-speed infrared products at a technology briefing hosted by the Infrared Data Association.

Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, IBM, and Sharp Electronics will be among the vendors demonstrating how infrared technology can provide 4-Mbps wireless access to the corporate LAN.

With additional reporting by Jill Gambon

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