3Com, Nortel bolster switch families

ATLANTA - Users should clear the decks for some new switching gear from 3Com and Nortel Networks that was quietly demonstrated or discussed at last week's NetWorld+Interop '99 Atlanta.

In the 3Com booth, the company was demonstrating an unannounced eight-slot version of its CoreBuilder 9000 switch for enterprise data centers.

3Com was also showing an embedded Windows NT module for the switch and a new eight-port gigabit copper SuperStack switch in the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance booth.

Rival Nortel booked a hotel suite to show its Accelar 8600 Layer 3 network core switch to customers willing to sign nondisclosure agreements. But Accelar product managers in the Nortel booth were forthcoming with information on the 8600, including plans to roll out Layer 3 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet modules in November and some ATM and packet-over-SONET blades next April.

The demonstrations show that some of the leading LAN switch vendors are ready to deliver on promises made when they announced their core offerings six to 18 months ago.

The events also indicate that demand for the latest LAN switching technology remains healthy among large enterprise network customers despite year 2000 concerns and vendors' emphasis on sales to service providers and small and midsize businesses.

3Com's eight-slot CoreBuilder 9000 is the third iteration of the high-end switch. 3Com already offers 16-slot and seven-slot variations for high-density core and chassis-based wiring closet applications, respectively.

The eight-slot switch features greater redundancy than the seven-slot CoreBuilder 9000 but half the port density of the 16-slot version. All switching modules are interchangeable between the seven-, eight- and 16-slot configurations of the CoreBuilder 9000, 3Com product managers say.

The switch was running a 24G bit/sec switch fabric that 3Com plans to scale to 112G bit/sec, product managers say. And tucked into the switch was a new Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet module based on 3Com's FIRE Application Specific Integrated Circuit, which sports four gigabit interface converter ports for connectivity to server farms or other switches.

In addition to enterprise net backbones, the switch is designed for service providers offering voice-over-IP, Web hosting or other data services requiring traffic classification and priority policies.

Underneath the eight-slot Core-Builder 9000 in the 3Com booth was a 16-slot version of the switch running an embedded Windows NT module. The module is designed to add intelligence to the CoreBuilder 9000 switches by tightly linking frame-forwarding decisions to NT-based policies, directories, firewalls and other network service applications running on the embedded operating system module.

3Com announced plans to support embedded NT on its switches early this year.

More where that came from

Over in the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance booth, 3Com was showing an unannounced SuperStack gigabit copper switch for server farm and workgroup aggregation. The switch features six 100/1000-TX ports and two 1000Base-SX ports with RJ-45 and MTRJ jacks.

3Com was also showing a copper-based Gigabit Ethernet network interface card with a single RJ-45 1000Base-T jack.

By supporting copper wiring, the products are designed to lower the cost of implementing Gigabit Ethernet in enterprise networks.

"This makes sense for 3Com's customer base," says Esmeralda Silva, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass. "If customers have close wiring closets with existing [copper] wiring, why not use that instead of pulling new fiber?"

The new 3Com products are expected to ship by November. 3Com product managers did not disclose pricing.

Nortel's plans

November is also when Nortel plans to ship the Accelar 8600, the Layer 3 version of the Accelar 8000 data center switch announced in April.

Included in the launch will be eight-port fiber-based Gigabit Ethernet modules, 48-port 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet cards and 48-port fiber-based Fast Ethernet boards, Nortel product managers say.

These will bring the Accelar 8000's Gigabit Ethernet port density up to 64 and its performance to 100 million packet/sec.

In April 2000, Nortel will expand the WAN and ATM-based features of the Accelar 8000 with sixport OC-3 and three-port OC-12 packet-over-SONET interfaces, and eight-port OC-3, two-port OC-12 and four-port DS-3 ATM interfaces for the switch.

The ATM interfaces are also designed to help migrate users of Nortel's Centillion ATM switches to the Accelar Gigabit Ethernet switches, product managers say.

"It makes sense to have ATM support. It's really important to have that tie-in between cell and frame switching, like Cisco's Catalyst 8500," Silva says.