Cabletron: ATM line complete

Home-grown line to debut at ATM Year 98, gives firm end-to-end ability.

By Jim Duffy
Network World, 6/1/98

San Jose, Calif. - Cabletron Systems, Inc. this week will roll out a 10G bit/sec campus switch that for the first time enables the company to offer an end-to-end line of home-grown ATM products for enterprise networks.

At the ATM Year 98 show here, Cabletron will unveil the SmartSwitch 6500, a mid-range ATM offering that fits between the company's SmartSwitch 2500 wiring closet product and high-density SmartSwitch 9500.

"This is the first time [the company] is going to announce a complete ATM strategy," said one source who asked not to be named. "In the past, when customers would hear ATM, they would very rarely think of Cabletron."

Cabletron, which declined to comment, presumably is looking for its buffed-up ATM product line to win some sorely needed market share and put the focus back on the company's technology. Cabletron has had its share of distractions of late, including a management upheaval and a stock price that has fallen near its 52-week low.

Cabletron is targeting a worldwide ATM market that will reach $4.3 billion next year, according to Vertical Systems Group in Dedham, Mass. Almost $3 billion of that will be spent on equipment for enterprise LANs and WANs and service provider networks.

Cabletron has been reselling FORE Systems, Inc. enterprise ATM switches since 1992. Cabletron will continue to offer FORE gear until the companies' agreement expires in 2002, sources said.

The ATM switches Cabletron recently obtained through the acquisition of Digital Equipment Corp.'s Network Products Group will be targeted at service providers, sources said.

"They pretty much have the waterfront covered with their own ATM stuff now, plus the Digital stuff," said Ron Jeffries, principal at Jeffries Research in Arroyo Grande, Calif. "The 6500 is very competitive. It's priced right [and has a] good feature set."

The 6500 features a 10-slot chassis. Two of the slots house redundant, nonblocking switch fabric modules, while eight hold I/O modules. The I/O modules include four-port 155M bit/sec OC-3, four-port 45M bit/sec DS-3 and single-port 622M bit/sec OC-12 interfaces.

The SmartSwitch 6500 sports a 10G bit/sec cell transfer bus and 6.4G bit/sec frame bus backplane for simultaneous LAN and ATM switching.

The switch can run SmartSwitch 6000 LAN switching modules. The backplanes can be interconnected using Cabletron's High Speed Interface Module uplink. The buffers on the 6500 are 512K cells deep.

The 6500 will compete against FORE's 10G bit/sec ASX-1000; Bay Networks, Inc.'s 10G bit/sec Centillion 1600; 3Com Corp.'s CoreBuilder 7000HD; and Cisco Systems, Inc.'s Catalyst 5500, LightStream 1010, and upcoming 20G bit/sec LightStream ATM switch.

Cabletron's current ATM switches - the SmartSwitch 2500 and SmartSwitch 9500 - sport 2.5G bit/sec and 30G to 75G bit/sec of bandwidth, respectively. The 6500 will cost $1,100 per OC-3 port and about $6,000 per OC-12 port, sources said. The switch will ship in July, they said.