Fast/Gig Ether Q&A from America Online:
MF PKeeler wrote:
"If companies are having trouble making the case for moving to 100 MB Ethernet, why would anyone think they will move to 1000MB (Gigabit) Ethernet. In other words, if there are no consumers for Fast Ethernet why assume there will be some for Gigabit Ethernet?
Further, isn't there another ethernet standard competing with Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet? "
My response:
Not exactly. There are indeed many, many customers for Fast Ether, which is a "staging point" for Gig Ether. In fact, the MRVC Gig modules implement just that. I noticed Cisco and others also announced Gig modules for FE, quite a bit later than MRVC did.
First, Companies are NOT having trouble making the case for moving to 100MB Ethernet. In fact, they are moving to FE in droves. Rather, companies are having problems STAYING with 10MB...prices on 10MB products have dropped. When 3Com says customers are "confused" by faster ethernet, this is a "nice" way of saying the 10MB market has collapsed (thought 100MB Ethernet is selling like crazy). In the networking supply chain, the chairman of
Natiional Semi (NSM) recently made comments supporting this scenario (orders for 100MB chips are exploding).
Wihout question, the 100MB market will grow in the triple digits this year. What won't grow is the 10MB market, because the 100MB market is effectively cannibalizing the 10MB market. Also, the price cuts on 100MB adapter cards will hurt profits at companies which made money on these, but will help *improve* sales of 100MB switches--exactly Intel's intent. 3Com was making a lot of money on 10MB products, and adapter cards. Now that's changed for
3Com...
Thus, the recent trends (LAN FE/GE) have actually IMPROVED for MRVC against almost any other networking company. MRVC may well have one of the highest growth rates across the entire networking sector...near triple-digit. And MRVC is not weighed down with adapter or 10MB products.
There's no standard competing with Gigabit Ethernet per se...although some elements of what was known as Fiber Channel are actually part of the GE spec. You might say, though, that ATM is (and has been) competition for GE is the LAN. As ATM has not made it to very many LANs, and Fast Ether is the big growth area, it makes sense that the next step in the LAN is the evolution of Fast Ethernet...enter Gigabit Ethernet!
For an even higher speed LAN solution, enter IP switching. In fact, the complete Fast/Gig/IP combination is the perfect evolutionary solution for the corporate LAN. Indeed, per "deterministic" traits of Gigabit Ethernet, the latter combination is not only evolutionary, but a viable, sellable alternative solution to ATM with QOS.
Dan |
