Nortel crafts Catalyst killer

Accelar upgrade guns for Cisco's biggest switch.

By Jim Duffy
Network World, 03/01/99

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. - Nortel Networks later this month is expected to unveil its next-generation routing switch, which sources say will give Cisco's backbone Catalyst 8540 a run for its money.

Nortel will roll out the Accelar 8000, a 10-slot switch that will support frame and ATM cell switching for LANs and WANs, sources say. The Accelar 8000 will also support Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching, and is designed for high-density 10/100M bit/sec and Gigabit Ethernet aggregation in the core of enterprise networks.

"We're starting to transition our wiring closets to gigabit, and we really need something with higher density in the core," says Miguel Corteguera, assistant director for college network services at Miami-Dade Community College in Miami, who uses Nortel's current generation of Accelar switches. "We're also building an ATM WAN, but we plan to keep gigabit at the core of the LAN at each campus."

Currently, Nortel's top-of-the-line Layer 3 campus switch is the Accelar 1200, an eight-slot, 7G bit/sec frame-only switch. The Accelar 1200 supports up to 96 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet ports and 12 Gigabit Ethernet links.

Nortel would not reveal details about the Accelar 8000 last week, so backplane speeds, port densities, pricing and availability could not be learned by press time. But sources say Nortel plans to scale the switch to support more than 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports, between 240 and 384 10/100 ports and 200 million packet/sec.

By contrast, Cisco's Catalyst 8540 is a 13-slot, 40G bit/sec switch that forwards 24 million packet/sec. It supports up to 128 routed 10/100 ports or 16 routed Gigabit Ethernet ports, according to Cisco.

The Catalyst 8540 began shipping late last year.

Pricing strategy

Sources also say Nortel will offer the Accelar 8000 at a very aggressive price in order to win back business from users who have opted for products from Cisco, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks and Packet Engines. Currently, industry average pricing for Layer 3 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet backbone switch ports is about $600 and $2,000, respectively.

Nortel has to be aggressive in pricing to steal customers away from Cisco, says Todd Hanson, an analyst at Dataquest in San Jose.

As for the configuration of the switch, two of the Accelar 8000's slots will house redundant switching fabrics, sources say.

The remainder will house Layer 2 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet modules, and ATM blades, they say.

Layer 3 capabilities will be isolated on the switch fabric modules to achieve telco-like redundancy and centralized control, sources say. The switch controllers may also sport up to two Layer 2 or Layer 3 Gigabit Ethernet or ATM uplinks, they say.

The eight user slots will house modules that perform Layer 2 switching at wire speed, sources say. The Accelar 8000 will also recognize Layer 4 information so traffic can be prioritized and forwarded based on particular applications.

The Accelar 8000's ATM component will come from Nortel's existing ATM technology, but not from its 4-year-old Centillion switch, analysts say.

"If you look at the Centillion architecture, it was great for what it was. But the only place where it still is doing really well is in a lot of tokenring installations," says an industry analyst who requested anonymity. "Then again, if you're only interested in token-ring switching, you're paying a lot for the ATM architecture."

Broader plan

Eventually, Nortel will add ATM technology from its Passport switches to the Accelar line, analysts say.

The Accelar 8000 will be part of a broader enterprise network rollout from Nortel that is also expected to include WAN modules for the Accelar 1200; a high-density 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet aggregation and distribution switch to go up against Cisco's Catalyst 6000; and ATM uplinks for the BayStack 450.