Is 10G Ethernet for you?

While observers have largely preordained 10 Gigabit Ethernet as a carrier technology, Enterasys Networks is betting companies will be hungry for that kind of bandwidth too.

The Cabletron spinoff this week will announce the industry's first prestandard 10 Gigabit Ethernet product, a 12-port Gigabit Ethernet box with a single 10G bit/sec up-link, intended to link backbone switch routers.

"Those who say 10 Gigabit Ethernet will only be a service provider technology in the [metro-politan-area network (MAN)] aren't in touch with the needs of many enterprises," says John Roese, CTO at Enterasys.

The company's new Matrix E1 switch is being beta-tested at the particle acceleration laboratories at CERN, a European nuclear research group that says its Gigabit Ethernet backbone will be obsolete by 2002.

"We need to inject 10 Gigabit in the core of our backbone to connect our backbone routers together," says Jacques Altaber, group leader of IT, who plans to try out unannounced 10 Gigabit Ethernet products from Extreme and Foundry as well.

Other Enterasys customers are divided on the pressing need for that much bandwidth.

"That's probably not on the immediate horizon for us," says James Labonte, network engineer at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Ill. Labonte says his Gigabit Ethernet backbone is nowhere near saturated, but he could see adding 10 Gigabit blades to his X-Pedition switches as the hospital's use of electronic medical imaging increases.

"We will be looking at going to [10 Gigabit Ethernet] when it arrives on the scene," says James Wiedel, director of network technology at the University of Southern California. With multiple, trunked gigabit links connecting his core of SmartSwitch Routers together, Wiedel says, "I could start using 10 Gig today."

Enterasys also plans to ship 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules for its X-Pedition and E7 backbone switches by year-end. Enterasys would not reveal pricing for its Matrix E1, but market research firm IDC estimates per-standard 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports will cost about $2,000.

The issue of who needs that much bandwidth was a hot topic at the Gigabit Ethernet Conference in San Jose last week. In panel discussions, users and vendors debated 10 Gigabit Ethernet's future, with many stating it will mainly be a service provider technology early on.

"The sweet spot for 10 Gigabit Ethernet today is in MAN applications," said Bruce Tolley, manager of emerging technologies for Cisco and a member of the IEEE 802.3ae 10 Gigabit Ethernet Task Force. With increasing use of application service providers, Ethernet WAN carriers and Web hosters, metropolitan networks are approaching the breaking point, he says.

Tolley added that while the standard is technically done, it won't be ratified until March. So he doesn't expect to see many 10 Gigabit Ethernet deployments until then.

MAN provider Telseon has an immediate need for 10G bit/sec technology, said Steve Russell, chief development officer.

"We like to make sure we have more bandwidth than we have demand," he said, noting that Telseon foresees using 10 Gigabit Ethernet to aggregate gigabit links from the metropolitan edge into the MAN core.

West Virginia University sees 10 Gigabit Ethernet playing a role in its MAN, which links buildings across its campus.

But "we need to get Gigabit in there before we can think about 10 Gigabit Ethernet," says Jeffrey Fritz, principal network engineer at the university, which is migrating from an ATM backbone to Gigabit Ethernet. It could be three to five years before 10 Gigabit Ethernet fits into the mix, Fritz says. o

Contact Senior Writer Phil Hochmuth

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