April 25, 2001
(Network World)
It could be said that the Gigabit Ethernet landscape has become like the market for Razor scooters -- those foot-propelled toys that every kid seems to own. While once expensive and available only from a few vendors, these days, it seems everyone's making them, and they're only getting cheaper.
A recent slew of cheap Gigabit Ethernet product announcements from many vendors backs up this notion, with several Gigabit switches, network interface cards (NIC) and even laptop adapters available now or on the horizon. These announcements also signal the mainstreaming of Gigabit Ethernet, according to one analyst.
Gigabit Ethernet is becoming a network commodity, said Lauri Vickers, an analyst at Cahners In-Stat Group in Newton, Mass. Just as Fast Ethernet and Layer 3 switching quickly went from bleeding-edge to run-of-the-mill LAN technologies, so goes Gigabit Ethernet, she said.
Asante Technologies Inc. next week will announce a 12-port Gigabit Ethernet switch for connecting servers to a backbone or high-end users to network. The company's IntraCore 65120 will feature 10 10/100/1,000M bit/sec. ports (fiber or copper) plus two Gigabit Interface Connector (GBIC) interfaces for uplinks. The key to San Jose-based Asante's offering is the price, around $400 per Gigabit Ethernet port. Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm IDC estimated the average per-port price for Gigabit Ethernet ports was about $1,000 last year. Also, the Asante switch has a backplane of 38.4G bit/sec., which could help avoid congestion when traffic is high.
Also getting into the act was Netgear Inc., which released an eight-port Gigabit box and a copper-based Gigabit NIC. Netgear's GS508T is an eight-port, copper-based Gigabit box that is priced at $215 per port. However, the device has no GBIC uplink ports and has a backplane of 16G bit/sec. Each port on the box can autosense 10/100/1,000M bit/sec. connections.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Netgear's Gigabit NIC is also copper-based, and can support 64- and 32-bit Peripheral Component Interconnect buses on Intel-based servers. At $180, the adapter costs less than half the average industry price for a Gigabit Ethernet NIC in 2000, which IDC estimated to be about $460. Not to be outdone, D-Link Systems Inc., a consumer and small office/home office networking vendor in Irvine, Calif., last week also released a copper-based Gigabit Ethernet adapter priced at $129.
And finally, on the 1,000M bit/sec. NIC front, component maker Marvell Technology Group Ltd. announced last week that it's shipping Gigabit Ethernet transceiver components for laptop PC Card adapters and integrated LAN-on-motherboard adapters for laptops. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company says its Alaska Ultra PHY transceiver can autosense 10M to 1,000M bit/sec. links and could be used on Mini PCI or Card Bus Type 2 adapters. Users might expect laptop NIC vendors to soon have Gigabit products on the market.
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