Who doesn’t want more bandwidth?
Cisco Systemsis helping its customers deploy more
bandwidth, thanks to a series of new 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) products
announced today.
The new product releases are part of Cisco’s effort to help
it capitalize on the increasing demand for 10 GbE.
The new 8 port 10 GbE module for Cisco’s Catalyst 6500 series switches will
deliver increased switching performance and, according to Cisco, will also
reduce the price per port cost for users.
John Yen, senior manager of Catalyst Switching Marketing at Cisco, explained to
internetnews.com that the new 8-port 10GE module for the Catalyst
6500 delivers 64 gigabits per second/slot of local switching performance.
This is a 60 percent increase from the existing 4-port module, which offers 40 Gbps/slot local switching performance. Users will also get more Ethernet
for less money on a per-port basis.
“The price-per-port reduction is based on the 8-port 10GE module price/port
vs. 4-port 10GE module price/port in distributed configuration,” Yen said.
According to Yen, the 4 port module is the reason why Cisco holds a 70
percent plus market share in 10GbE market. Overall, Cisco expects the 10GbE
market to continue to grow at rapid pace.
Yen cited statistics from research firm Dell ‘Oro Group that forecasts the
market for 10GbE in calendar 2006 to reach $1.3 billion, up 78 percent from
calendar year 2005.
Yen considers the direction from Gigabit Ethernet to 10GbE a natural bandwidth migration.
“Customers have been rolling out high-performance Catalyst 6500 Supervisor
720’s over the past three years, which has laid the groundwork for 10GbE
deployment,” Yen said.
In terms of the migration period, the adoption of 10GbE, ultimately may only
just be a matter of time.
“As with all new technologies, 10 GbE went through the normal cycles and
phases of customer adoption,” Yen said.
“Ethernet in general is a nearly
ubiquitous technology in networks today, so it was only a matter of time
before 10 GbE adoption hit its stride.
“At the end, the compelling benefits of 10 GbE is helping customers make
this technology transition an easy decision to make, particularly in
critical areas such as data center networks.”