* Network World spotlights two new router technologies
I don’t want to fall into the journalistic trap of “two events equal a trend,” but it is interesting to see two small, router-related companies in the same week trying to shake up an industry that doesn’t get shaken up very much.
My colleague Jim Duffy wrote about both companies for Network World. The first, XKL, is led by Len Bosack, one of the co-founders of Cisco. According to Duffy’s report, XKL is claiming that its product will transform the way companies do business.
The product is the DXM optical transport system, which lets enterprise companies establish their own point-to-point metropolitan-area optical links – if you have access to dark fiber. Duffy says that companies typically have to either purchase a service from a carrier or get into the telecom business themselves with equipment that’s expensive and difficult for an enterprise to manage and operate.
DXM has management features that are more familiar to enterprise network managers. And XKL claims the approach is much less expensive than going with a carrier service. Much, much less. See Duffy’s article for more details and see this article for a Q&A with Bosack.
Meanwhile, a start-up called Anagran began shipping its FR-1000 Flow Router – which, as Duffy again reports, is intended to move IP-based video, voice, data and wireless traffic with better performance, lower cost and lower energy consumption than your typical routers.
Anagran was founded by Larry Roberts, one of the developers of ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet of today.
The supposedly game-changing approach of Anagran is technology that looks at flows traveling through the network, rather than concentrating on a succession of individual packets.
Editor’s Note: Starting Aug. 14, this newsletter will be renamed “Network Architecture” to better reflect the focus of the newsletter. We thank you for reading Network World newsletters!
