High-speed router start-up Nexabit Networks, Inc. yesterday revealed some of its plans for a terabit switch/router the company hopes to ship this fall.
The company is building a router that can support 6.4T bit/sec of switching capacity. This kind of bandwidth will help scale the Internet and enable users to implement large private intranets, real-time voice-over-IP, and other new applications, Nexabit claimed.
Nexabit does not have an official name for its new router but refers to it as the multi-terabit switch/router. The initial system will support up to 16 10G bit/sec OC-192 links and 64 2.5G bit/sec OC-48s over SONET and wavelength division multiplexing, said Gene Wahlberg, Nexabit senior vice president of sales and marketing.
A single chassis - which holds 16 one-port OC-192 and four-port OC-48 line cards - can scale up to 6.4T bit/sec through the insertion of four 1.6T bit/sec switch fabric modules, Wahlberg said. Separate CPU boards handle route processing and then download route tables onto each line card.
Packet delay through the switch fabric is no more than 3 microseconds, Wahlberg said. And IP packet forwarding is 40 nanoseconds on an OC-192 and 160 nanoseconds on an OC-48, Wahlberg said.
For quality-of-service (QoS), which will be a key differentiator of products and service offerings, the Nexabit switch/router support eight priority queues per interface. This number of queues fosters high-performance mulicasting and constant bit rate-type service for IP traffic, Wahlberg said.
The switch/router also permits simultaneous switching of frames and cells, Wahlberg said.
Analysts say products like Nexabit's will appeal to Internet service providers looking to provide IP-based multiservice applications to users and who are already approaching the performance limits of Cisco Systems, Inc.'s 12000 Gigabit Switch Router and Ascend Communications Corp.'s GRF 1600.
"Not only is it applicable to the new IP-based phone companies,like Qwest and Level 3 Communications, but at some point I think you'll see the MCIs, Sprints and AT&Ts of the world interested in these products," said David Passmore, president of consultancy NetReference, Inc. in Sterling, Va. "The speed that you need there is OC-48 to OC-192."
Nexabit will have lots of company in this market, including fellow start-ups Argon Networks, Inc., Avici Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc. and Pluris, Inc. (NW, Jan 19, page 20).
Wahlberg did not disclose pricing for the multiterabit switch/router.
Nexabit: (508) 898-9900.
RELATED LINKS
Another terabit device. Network World, 1/12/98.
Contact Senior Editor Jim Duffy
The really big router battle
A look at terabit startups trying to take down Cisco. Network World, 12/29/97.
Keeping Current: What a tera-ble idea!
Fred McClimans tries to nip terabit Ethernet in the bud. Network World Fusion, 3/23/98.
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