Speed is less important than the volume of processing power that Gigabit Ethernet over copper can bring to bear for Mike Bennett, network engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. "Our everyday user probably isn't going to ask for it, but we have some computer research scientists working on a cluster of PCs doing parallel processing. They'll probably be our first power users of 1000Base-T," Bennett says. Although the lab runs fiber and copper cabling to desktops, the copper option is likely to be more attractive. And Bennett says that by the time his users really start requesting 1000Base-T upgrades this fall and winter, prices on copper NICs will already come down.

"I'll set up a couple of machines and do some throughput tests and characterize the machines with different vendors' cards," including SysKonnect and 3Com, Bennett says. "Then we'll come up with a spreadsheet that lists vendor performance and the cost so we have something we can recommend as our users start to request 1000Base-T."

Even though the standards for 1000Base-T were completed in June, the first Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper products only began to hit the market a few months ago. Vendors blamed the delays on the shortage of silicon chips of all kinds, but some IT managers and industry analysts sense vendor foot-dragging. They say vendors have less incentive to offer a cheaper alternative to the higher-margin fiber NICs.

"Vendors have vacillated a bit; with so much happening on the enterprise front, it's been hard to stay focused on Ethernet over copper with all the talk of optics and routers," says Warren Williams, VP and chief quality officer at Eastern Management Group, a consulting firm in Bedminster, N.J. "Yet we know bandwidth requirements continue to go up at the desktop. Vendor focus is shifting back from the LAN as they realize they need to provide greater capabilities back at the desktop."

Bennett at Lawrence Berkeley Lab says he placed his first order for 1000Base-T NICs in Novemberbut didn't get the first shipment until early March. And while other vendors claimed to have products, only SysKonnect could actually deliver, he says. SysKonnect was using fiber in their copper NIC, so the price remained high--about $700 per port. "There weren't any cost savings, but I could get them now," Bennett says.

The chip situation has eased a bit, and other equipment problems, including the availability of the physical interfaces for 1000Base-T, are getting resolved, says Dell'Oro Group's Collins. "There was a production problem with the original parts that were introduced," Collins says. "That's been remedied, and products are now ready for volume production."

In that vein, IT managers can expect lots of Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper demonstrations on the NetWorld+Interop show floor, as well as lots of vendor positioning.

Tolley says Cisco will introduce a multiport NIC for wiring closet applications. "Today, users may have 10/100 uplink, but they could accelerate the uplinks with a slide-in module for 1000Base-T," he says. Desktop products will come in time, he notes, but in general there's less contention for bandwidth at the desktop level, he says, because most communication is intra-group. "But if you need to get out to an extranet, then gigabit over copper would help a lot."

By summer, 3Com will introduce a server NIC for Gigabit Ethernet over copper, according to Bipin Mistry, technical marketing manager for business networks group at 3Com. It will be priced at about $150 per port, roughly 30% above 10/100 switching equipment.

At present, Mistry says, users are combining multiple 10/100 cards for throughput of 400 to 500 Mbps. Next, they will install a 1000Base-T NIC for the workgroup, then on to the core switching fabric and eventually to the desktop in the 2002 time frame as pricing improves, he projects.

"Copper is a really important development in this industry, enabling a majority of the cabling infrastructure to communicate at gigabit speeds," says Collins of Dell'Oro Group. "It's a tremendous potential upgrade path for desktops and servers connected with Category 5."

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