Fujitsu takes the slow road

Fujitsu Computer Products of America this week became another vendor to embrace slower speeds in its LAN switches.

The company already sells switches that run 10 Gigabit Ethernet, but this week it introduced switches that mainly run Gigabit Ethernet. While the economy may be showing some signs of stabilizing, demand for high-end networking gear undoubtedly has not been at the same level that it would be in richer times.

Fujitsu’s equipment is intended for a different market than Netgear’s is, but I was reminded of Netgear’s announcement in March. Netgear introduced some switches using Fast Ethernet (100M bit/sec) rather than Gigabit Ethernet, to keep costs down. The company noted at the time that customers were not worried so much about future-proofing as they were about meeting their current networking needs.

However, at the same time, 10 Gigabit Ethernet has been cited by research firms like Dell’Oro Group as the one bright spot in this market segment. I guess it’s just not bright enough.

The two new Fujitsu switches, shipping now, come in 24- and 48-port models. They have auto-sensing 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet ports, with four ports of SFP optics and open slots that can be used for one or two dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink cards. Previous models had 12 or 20 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

These speeds allow Fujitsu to address more common network speeds, and the uplinks provide a step up to 10 Gigabit Ethernet when customers are ready to make that move.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.