A handful of router start-ups and industry
veterans this year will seek to do what
some consider impossible: knock Cisco Systems, Inc. off its hilltop perch.
YAGO Systems, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., Pluris, Inc., Avici Systems, Inc. and Torrent Networking Technologies will take a shot at Cisco by rolling out a variety of huge routers that can perform at gigabit and even terabit speeds.
Old stand-bys 3Com Corp., Bay Networks, Inc., Ascend Communications, Inc. and others also will pump up the power on their routers, all in an attempt to make a dent in an arena where Cisco holds an impressive 70% market-share lead.
While these vendors are trying to get high-speed products out the door in 1998, Cisco isn't sitting still. The company is prepping its own very fast router: the 12000 Gigabit Switch Router (GSR), which enables high-speed backbones to scale to OC-48, an Internet service provider-level speed, for release by early next year. The GSR employs Cisco's proprietary Tag Switching, which attaches labels to packet headers for more efficient traffic forwarding.
Observers say Cisco's competition needs to get products out the door and demonstrate that their technology can compete and outperform Cisco's in the real world - not on paper.
For example, Pluris is touting that its Massively Parallel Routing (MPR) technology is faster than Cisco's Tag Switching. Unlike Tag Switching, MPR offers more than one path to a destination, using multiple routing engines to determine the best one. But its router is not going to be available until the second half of 1998.
Meanwhile, Mountain View, Calif.-based Juniper Networks says it is attacking the router giant by focusing more on its software to manage the router than the router itself. Although vague with architectural details about the products that are due late next year or early in 1999, Juniper has secured more than $40 million in backing from Cisco enemies such as 3Com.
Other technology issues, such as the implementation of quality of service techniques also will be a big struggle for these start-ups, says Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a consultancy in Voorhees, N.J.
Nolle gives router start-ups little chance of surviving into the next century anyway, unless they are bought by a larger vendor.
