Advanced switch gear on tap

Network World - Several Ethernet and application switch vendors plan to roll out products at the Interop Conference and Expo in Las Vegas that are intended to make high-speed network gear more affordable and help users boost application performance and security.

On the network side, Alcatel and SMC Networks Inc. are set to announce 10/100/1000Mbit/sec. switches for midsize and large companies, and Coyote Point Systems Inc., Radware Ltd. and Stampede Technologies Inc. are expected to have new application acceleration products on tap that combine Layer 4-7 switching with traffic shaping, protocol offloading and security features.

Alcatel's switch and the SMC offering are further examples of advanced switch features, such as Power over Ethernet (PoE), 10/100/1000 Ethernet and 10G, becoming more affordable. Triple-speed or 10/100/1000 switch ports with PoE are now priced about the same as 10/100 ports without PoE were two or three years ago, according to industry observers.

These LAN technologies are becoming more widely available and mature, and application switch vendors are including more features that go beyond wire-speed Layer 4-7 packet inspection and forwarding. No longer just balancing server loads or inspecting browser cookies, switch gear now includes such features as TCP/IP offloading, intrusion detection and tools that accelerate service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0-like applications.

Alcatel, making its first enterprise product announcement since its merger with Lucent Technologies Inc., plans to offer 24- and 48-port 10/100/1000 switches with options for PoE and 10G Ethernet uplinks for connecting to a LAN core or aggregation layer. The OmniSwitch 6850 series switches can be bought with or without PoE, which costs an additional $20 to $40 per port (for 24- and 48-port boxes, respectively), and comes with a beefier power supply and external power-shelf module. Optional 10G Ethernet ports use XFP pluggable form-factor modules and range from $2,000 to $4,000 per port.

The 6850 switch can support IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, as well as basic Layer 3 switching out of the box. A $1,000 software upgrade will add routing protocols.

More than 200 OmniSwitch 6850 switches are being deployed as part of a sweeping network upgrade at ViaHealth, a Rochester, N.Y., health care management company that includes Rochester General Hospital. The hospital currently has older-generation Alcatel switches, and is putting in the new boxes to support its simultaneous wireless LAN rollout and bandwidth needs that have grown beyond 10/100 Ethernet.

"Our current switched network was about seven years old, so it was time for an upgrade," says Donna VanHousen, senior director of information services and technology at ViaHealth. Plus, she says, "our applications are requiring more bandwidth and features."