Submitted by Interop on Thu, 05/01/2008 - 12:11pm.
Switch vendors are taking their battle to the outlet.
Watts/Mbps or Gbps are replacing speeds and feeds as competitive benchmarks in switching. Nortel, for example, has a TurboTax-like software tool that measures the power consumption of its switches against Cisco's, and the resultant savings. The Energy Efficiency Calculator provides theoretical and actual analysis of power consumption and savings over a five year period, Nortel says. It's been available to Nortel partners since March.
For its part, Cisco claims its switches are the first to receive a new green certification from network product tester Miercom. The tests in Miercom's "Certified Green" program are designed to emulate "real world" data ceter application traffic and profiles for performance per power benchmarks. It certifies products based on power and energy efficiency, including usage and management, heat dissipation and cooling requirements.
Foundry, meanwhile, played up the power efficiency of its new 16-port BigIron RX 10Gbps switch module -- less than 19 watts per port per module -- as almost haf that of Cisco's Catalyst 6500.
