InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
| September 29, 1997 |
N+I Theme: Faster, Cheaper Networks
Gigabit Ethernet LANs, DSL WAN access, VPN software to be highlighted
By
Monua Janah
,
Mary E. Thyfault
,
Beth Davis
, and
Caryn Gillooly
Principal among the demonstrations and promises will be Gigabit Ethernet LANs; Sonet WAN backbone services; Digital Subscriber Line WAN access products and services; and vi
rtual private networking software for secure links over the Internet.
Several companies will unveil plans at N+I for switches and routers that can scale to gigabit speeds. Digital Equipment will announce a backbone switch, with a capacity of more than 20 Gbps, that supports Gigabit Ethernet as well as Fast Ethernet. Cabletron Systems will unveil a two-port gigabit module for its MMAC-Plus switching hub, gigabit modules for its SmartSwitch 6000 and 2200 switches, as well as a network interface card and a repeater. Among other vendors demonstrating or announcing Gigabit Ethernet switches will be 3Com, Prominet, and XLNT Designs.
3Com's CoreBuilder 3500 switch, unveiled earlier this month and due to ship in November, uses a new generation of ASICs called Fire. The Fire technology allows so-called Layer 3 switching or routing in hardware, as well as basic Layer 2 switching. 3Com is pitching the Core Builder 3500 Layer 3 switch as a replacement for routers in LAN backbones.
The P550 Cajun Switch with
Integrated Routing, from Prominet, in Marlboro, Mass., is a similar product. It adds routing support to an existing Layer 2 switch. With a capacity of more than 45 Gbps, the switch can route Internet Protocol and IPX traffic in hardware, and it supports Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Cisco Systems, under increasing scrutiny for not unveiling ship dates for its Gigabit Ethernet switches, will hold a briefing at N+I to explain itself. Since buying Gigabit Ethernet developer Granite Systems last September, Cisco has said it won't ship products until after the standard for Gigabit Ethernet is set. That's expected to happen next spring.
As Gigabit Ethernet switches trickle out, vendors are anticipating demand for bigger, faster routers or routing switches that can support these high-speed LAN interfaces. Ascend Communications, Cisco, Torrent Networks, and others have begun shipping these next-generation routers. Cabletron will announce at N+I plans for a Gigabit Switch Router and other products, due in the secon
d half of 1998.
Analysts note that despite all the hoopla, the Gigabit Ethernet market still doesn't exist. "Nobody is buying Gigabit Ethernet yet," says Dave Passmore, a principal at Decisys Inc. in Sterling, Va. "If anything, companies are kicking the tires. A lot of organizations have to worry about upgrading the wiring infrastructure. And it's a challenge to upgrade the servers, because the effect of Gigabit Ethernet interfaces is like taking a drink out of a fire hose."
Helen Chen, a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Labs in Livermore, Calif., is considering Digital's Gigabit Ethernet products to meet a special
need. "We are doing loosely coupled distributed computing by clustering a large group of PCs," Chen says. "This setup requires special-purpose interconnect technologies, which suffer from the fact that they are special purpose. Prices are high."
Instead, Sandia is weighing Gigabit Ethernet, Chen says, "because it uses Ethernet, which most users are familiar with, and it can potentially be a large-volume, commodity technology."
As Gigabit Ethernet heats up, vendors are also readying the next generation of token ring technology. A group of companies, including all the big networking players, have formed an alliance to speed the development of token ring technology that runs at 100 Mbps and gigabit speeds.
Convergence
MCI is expected to roll out networkMCI Broadband Connections, a Sonet-based service at speeds between 45 Mbps and 155 Mbps. Analysts predict that big businesses will use the MCI service to build their own large enterprise networks that could include a mix of voice and intranet traffic.
MCI is also promising millisecond restoral. Customers who experience an outage of more than a minute will get 50% off their monthly bill. MCI promises free service for the month should an outage last more than an hour. "The assurance of restoration will give customers more flexibility in designing private networks," says Cathy Gadecki, an analyst with TeleChoice Inc. in Verona, N.J.
The Sonet service will also be easier to manage than current options. To get 155-Mbps service now, customers must piece together three 45-Mbps lines. And MCI will deliver Sonet "door to door" as both a local and long-distance service, says Stephen Von Rump, VP of enterprise marketing. "Th
is will be
a big local market driver for us,"
he says.
MCI will start taking orders for the Sonet-based service in October. It will be available in 22 major markets next year.
Another forthcoming WAN technology to be touted at N+I is Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), which was developed to speed local access over conventional copper lines. GTE, which has been conducting trials of the technology with Micro- soft since early 1996, is expected to announce its schedule for deploying DSL services. Most of GTE's tests have been of 1.5-Mbps downstream service and 64-Kbps upstream. GTE says its first rollout will not include lower-speed ISDN- based DSL services, at 128 Kbps.
On the frame relay front, the Frame Relay Forum will sponsor the "SVC Technology Tour," aimed at educating users and vendors about the benefits of switched virtual circuits. With SVCs, users pay for network bandwidth as they need it, letting them connect to frame relay networks at high speeds for brief applications such as file transf
ers. Until now, users connected to the network via permanent virtual circuits.
VPN Thrust
Security vendor Timestep will announce the second generation of its Permit Network Security System. The new version will be fully compatible with IPSec, a collection of Internet Engineering Task Force network security standards that include encryption, authentication, and k
ey management. Timestep will also announce partnerships with several vendors, adding public key and firewall technologies to its VPN technologies.
Newcomer New Oak Communications will announce a WAN access switch at N+I that supports IPSec and other VPN "tunneling" standards. The Acton, Mass., company's NOC 4000 Extranet Access Switch will support 200 to 2,000 simultaneous users and include Web-based configuration tools.
Cabletron will further detail its strategy to integrate its remote access line with its core switching products. This will let companies push Cabletron's SecureFast technology to the remote site in order to control user access to applications and set up VPNs, a company spokeswoman says.
Among other vendors to show their VPN wares at N+I are Assured Access Technology, Aventail, and RadGuard.
Meanwhile, IT managers looking to unplug their end users can expect to see a number of wireless LAN products working together at the show. The Wireless LAN Interoperability Forum will host
a live demo of about 25 vendors' products, including wireless thin clients, pen-based computers, wireless bar code scanners, wireless printers, and bridges between wired and wireless networks. All the products support OpenAir, a specification developed by Proxim Inc.
"One of the barriers to market growth is interoperability," says Scott Merkle, North American director of the WLI Forum, who notes that about 1.2 million wireless LAN clients are now installed in the United States. "If you look at customers' obstacles, they worry that if they buy one vendor's proprietary wireless LAN backbone, then they can only buy that vendor's clients, so they're locked in. They want a wireless LAN that is a recognized standard so that they can buy a variety of vendors' products."
Participating vendors include Cruise Technologies, Fujitsu Personal Systems, Intermec, Kinetic, LXE, Mitsubishi Electric America, and Proxim.
Management Track
IBM's networking hardware division will announce that its Nways Manager for AIX product, which manages IBM's and other vendors' SNMP-based devices on campus networks, will support Java. IBM has already released a Java-based version of its workgroup product, Nways Workgroup Manager for Windows NT, and next year expects to bring out a Java version of its WAN-management product, called Nways Enterprise Manager. IBM also will announce that Nways Workgroup Manager for NT will come with distributed intelligent agents that help offload some of the management polling functions across the WAN.
In addition, IBM will begin bundling a new performance-management tool with its Java-based workgroup and campus management products that will let customers gather and maintain performance data on the fly. "This means that at a browser an IS manager will be able to build performance reports based on information that's being constantly updated in rea
l time," says Greg Marrow, brand manager for network-management products at the IBM division.
The new versions of the Nways Manager for AIX and Nways Workgroup Manager for NT are expected to be available in November, for $15,000 and $3,495, respectively.
Cool Compliance
NetCool Reporter can then let administrators custom-define service levels from the combination of event information and reports available through the NetCool products. NetCool Reporter is
expected to be available in early November; pricing hasn't been set.
Structured Internetworks Inc. is expected to release at N+I IPath/ 10M, a multichannel version of its IP-management offering. The company's existing product, IPath/10, is a simple two-port device that manages bandwidth from the local network to the WAN. But customers with large networks need a different box for each connection they want to manage. Not only can that be cumbersome, but there is also no way to consolidate the information from the different boxes.
The new product lets customers manage multiple connections through one box. "Now, with one central box, the administrator knows the bandwidth on all the ports, and utilization on the whole network can be totally understood," says Mark King, director of marketing for the San Jose, Calif., company.
Other new features in IPath/10M include the ability to manage IP addresses by group and set policies by group or individual user. The previous version managed only individual IP ad
dresses and didn't provide the ability to set any policies. IPath/10M is to be available immediately, starting at $3,000.
|
aster, cheaper, and more manageable networks-and the hardware, software, and services to help deliver them, at least someday-will be the prevailing themes at next week's NetWorld+Interop exhibition in Atlanta.
Growing Demand
