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February 28, 2000

Companies Are Eager For Gigabit Ethernet
Switch technology gains favor for high-speed enterprise connections

By Paul Korzeniowski

Related links:

sidebar: Vendors Aim To Make Ethernet Faster

And from our sister publications:

InternetWeek Ethernet To Get Supercharged To 10 Gigabits (2/21/00)

Electronic Buyers' News National pursues Gigabit Ethernet over copper (1/31/00)

InternetWeek Will Copper Gigabit Take Off In 2000? (1/10/00)

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igabit Ethernet is beginning to overtake asynchronous transfer mode as the popular choice for high-speed connections in fast-growing companies and large organizations.

Year-old online toy retailer Toysmart.com Inc. opted for Gigabit Ethernet to support continued growth in its network. The company, which has gone from managing two servers and a handful of employees at its launch to 30 servers and more than 200 employees by the end of last year, recently purchased a SmartSwitch 9000 switch from Cabletron Systems Inc.

"We had 100-Mbps Ethernet connections to different workgroups and needed a higher-speed connection to move information among our servers," says James Hutchinson, manager of network operations at Toysmart.com, in Waltham, Mass. "Gigabit Ethernet was an obvious choice, in part because it was inexpensive." The private company won't disclose what it paid for the upgrade, but the switches range from about $25,000 to $75,000, depending on features.

Lower prices are making Gigabit Ethernet a more attractive option than ATM for some users. The Dell'Oro Group, a research firm, reports that a fiber-optic Gigabit Ethernet port costs $900, compared with $3,300 for a 622-Mbps ATM connection. (An exact comparison is impossible because ATM operates at 155 Mbps, 622 Mbps, and 2.4 Gbps.) Dell'Oro also says vendors shipped 1.4 million Gigabit Ethernet ports last year, compared with 700,000 ATM ports. Industry-standard Gigabit Ethernet products and 622-Mbps ATM offerings both began shipping in 1998.

Pricing differences are even helping persuade some ATM users to switch to Gigabit Ethernet. The U.S. Army's Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, Ala., installed a 155-Mbps ATM network in 1996 to support 15,000 soldiers and civilians, but by last summer it was saturated. Within three years, users had begun exchanging more messages and their attachments became larger, bogging down the network.

"We found that putting in a new Gigabit Ethernet switch would cost us half as much as upgrading our existing network" to a 622-Mbps ATM switch, says Wilford Parker, a network manager at the Defense Department agency. Parker won't give cost details, but says the center saved money by choosing the FastIron Gigabit Ethernet switch from Foundry Networks Inc.

As more companies move toward Gigabit Ethernet, vendors have begun enhancing their products. The ability to run Gigabit Ethernet over copper cabling--though it's been difficult to perfect--is of prime interest to users. Longer term, companies also see a need for 10-Gbps Ethernet connections (see sidebar story, Vendors Aim To Make Ethernet Faster).

To date, users have been able to run Gigabit Ethernet only over fiber-optic connections. While fiber is and will continue to be the choice for backbone connections (it can carry Gigabit Ethernet signals over distances of more than 1-1/2 miles), customers prefer Category 5 copper wiring for their server and desktop links; copper represents about 80% of all business wiring. Copper wiring affords even greater savings on Gigabit Ethernet connections and is easier for users to implement than fiber-optic cabling.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers completed work last summer on the 802.3ab standard, designed to run Gigabit Ethernet over Category 5 copper wires at distances up to 100 meters. Vendors say there have been some problems getting copper-wire gigabit switches out the door right away, though. "There have been some constraints because the transceiver vendors haven't yet been able to deliver volume shipments of their products," says Les Poltrack, a product line manager at Cisco Systems. A transceiver is the underlying technology used in copper adapters.

But that problem appears to be easing. "At this point, we can meet any vendor's order," says Yossi Cohen, director of marketing for the network business unit at Broadcom Corp., a transceiver supplier. A trickling of compliant copper-wire Gigabit Ethernet products appeared on the market around year's end from companies such as Alteon WebSystems, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Hewlett-Packard, and 3Com; users can expect such products to become widely available later this year.

The arrival of such products should cut the cost of a Gigabit Ethernet port in half, to $450. "Because of the cost savings, I expect Gigabit Ethernet over copper products to sell well this year," says Dell'Oro Group analyst Greg Collins.

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