10 Gigabit ready to set up enterprise shop

Most corporate users are not yet clamoring for 10G Ethernet, but the technology is evolving from the concept phase to production customer trials and deployments in some cases.

Falling prices and the proliferation of inexpensive Gigabit products are pushing demand for 10 Gigabit among some users. Others are holding out for the copper version of 10 Gigabit, in the hopes that this will drive down the per-port cost of the technology even further. Observers say this could come into play as 10G moves from switch-to-switch applications into high-end server and network-attached storage (NAS ) connectivity.

While large government laboratories and research centers have been on the forefront of 10G adoption, a few recent installations of 10G have taken place in some more real-world enterprise environments, such as hospitals and in education.

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Most corporate users are not yet clamoring for 10G Ethernet, but the technology is evolving from the concept phase to production customer trials and deployments in some cases.

Falling prices and the proliferation of inexpensive Gigabit products are pushing demand for 10 Gigabit among some users. Others are holding out for the copper version of 10 Gigabit, in the hopes that this will drive down the per-port cost of the technology even further. Observers say this could come into play as 10G moves from switch-to-switch applications into high-end server and network-attached storage (NAS ) connectivity.

While large government laboratories and research centers have been on the forefront of 10G adoption, a few recent installations of 10G have taken place in some more real-world enterprise environments, such as hospitals and in education.

The North Bronx Healthcare Network (NBHN) recently completed an installation of 10 Gigabit switches from Extreme Networks  to leapfrog its Fast Ethernet-based infrastructure one step ahead of the upgrade cycle.

NBHN uses single-mode fiber runs to connect three hospitals with 10G bit/sec links. Driving the need for this kind of bandwidth was the growing use of applications such as medical-imaging technology, which can push digital magnetic resonance image (MRI) and X-ray files as large as 2G bytes across a LAN. While the 10G network was somewhat overkill, NBHN's CIO Dan Morreale says he anticipates that bandwidth needs will grow to utilize these pipes.

Future plans for large-scale server consolidation also are driving some users to lay 10G foundations today. At Manchester Community College (MCC) in Connecticut, 10G is changing some of the most common blueprints in building LANs. Many organizations deploy 10/100M bit/sec edge switches, usually stackable boxes, which feed into a Gigabit-speed distribution layer and then the LAN core.

MCC's approach is to eliminate the distribution layer and link desktop switches and servers directly to the core. To do this, 10G was required in the backbone, says Jason Blosser, IT director at the college.

"This architecture will help us cut administration costs" and equipment expenses, because the aggregation switch layer - about a dozen boxes - will be eliminated, he says.

10G reality check

The recent push of 10G products to corporate customers was spurred by a declining interest among carriers, which were the original 10G target market.

"When [10G Ethernet] was being developed, there was an expectation that there'd be an uptake on the service provider side," says Bruce Tolley, senior manager of emerging technologies at Cisco , who was active in crafting the 10G standard. The promise of long-haul 10G Ethernet over copper as a SONET replacement was the main focus of the IEEE at that time. "But with the dot-com bust and telecom restructuring, that didn't happen," he says.

The result of that action is 10G Ethernet is now an enterprise-focused technology.

Even after this switch to an enterprise focus, however, several analyst firms say that demand for the products is not high.

A recent In-Stat/MDR survey of 282 buyers of enterprise network equipment shows that 56% of respondents said they had "no plans" to deploy 10G Ethernet in their networks.

This corporate position on 10G is reflected in product shipments. According to the Dell'Oro Group, only 1,000 10G switch ports were shipped last year, and only about 4,000 are estimated to be sold to customers this year.