article about from wsj
May 8, 1998
Networking Show Highlights Faster,
More Versatile Products
By MARK BOSLET
Dow Jones Newswires
LAS VEGAS -- Two familiar themes dominated this week's networking
industry trade show here: producing gear that is faster and more
powerful, and giving it the capacity to do more.
Vendors attending the Networld+Interop conference rolled out powerful
switches, highlighted new network management and security software,
and pointed to the convergence of voice and computer networks. They
also talked up plans to bring more bandwidth to homes, even as some
Internet service providers promoted tiers of higher-quality, and
higher-priced, access to business customers.
The networking industry, not unlike other areas of technology, is
grappling with rapid change, which presents customers with more
choices. As networks continue their quick growth and users seek more
bandwidth, network managers find sorting through each wave of new
products more challenging.
Further, the Internet has altered the rather static traffic patterns of
mainframe and client-server networks, where users were grouped in
isolated, self-contained islands. Administrators have less control of
what users are doing and a greater need for oversight.
"People are trying to get their infrastructures right" even as their
networks are pushed into a role of finding new customers and business
opportunities, said William T. O'Shea, president of business
communications systems at Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU).
With this backdrop, industry jargon circulated about the Las Vegas
Convention center as freely as data packets, with the more than 600
vendors promoting gigabit, layer 3, virtual-private-network,
e-commerce, xDSL and bandwidth-management products.
Among the hottest topics in the networking world is the prospect of
sending voice, data and video traffic across a single network, a
cost-saving opportunity highlighted by 3Com Corp. (COMS) Chief
Executive Eric Benhamou in a well-attended keynote address.
Benahmou described this convergence as the "next major milestone for
our industry," and his sentiments were widely echoed.
It is the "hot topic right now" and a market that is "starting to happen,"
agreed Lucent's O'Shea.
Systems are here today, but widespread use is yet to come, he added. It
will be two to three years before most customers bring in the technology
fully.
The customers "doing trials now are the early adopters" and often larger
corporations, said Edward L. Wadbrook, vice president of product
management at NBX Corp., a private startup developing a telephone
convergence product for small and medium-sized businesses. Broader
market deployment is one to two years away, he said.
Several interesting technologies discussed in past years surfaced in
promising products this year. Gigabit switches have been reaching the
market over the past several months, and network managers attending
the show were clearly moving to deployment.
Among the high-powered boxes introduced at the show was a
eye-catching product from Fore Systems Inc. (FORE). The Warrendale,
Pa., company unveiled its ForeRunner ASX-4000, an asynchronous
transfer mode, or ATM, switch designed to sit at the heart of corporate
networks and run at an impressive 40 gigabits per second of
throughput, or speed.
Another product area moving from talk to market was layer 3 switching,
a way of intelligently routing data using silicon chips instead of slower
software. Industry leaders such as Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Bay
Networks Inc. (BAY) and 3Com Corp. (COMS) have been rushing
these products to market.
Cisco officials said Tuesday that layer-3 switching should be a $2
billion market by 2001.
Last year's drawing-board promises also translated into more
sophisticated software and hardware for creating virtual private
networks, "tunnel-like" connections across private networks and the
Internet that provide better security and privacy for data
communications.
Where last year there was "smoke and arm-waving," this year there are
actual solutions, said Grace Carr, vice president of corporate marketing
at Bay Networks Inc. (BAY). This year's products give service
providers and corporations the tools for easier, more sophisticated
tunneling and for more advanced monitoring of performance and
security.
The market for virtual-private-network gear looks like a "rapidly
growing" one that should really take off in three to six months, Carr
said. Market researchers see it quickly reaching at least $1 billion.
Both Bay and Ascend Communications Inc. (ASND) introduced
products for virtual private networks at the show. Bay brought out its
Extranet Switch 1000, a product for companies with up to 50
simultaneous remote or branch-office computer users who need to link
to a central network. The product incorporates modem functions,
security such as user authentication and abilities to manage the use of
bandwidth, or connection capacity.
Ascend introduced a broadened business strategy for the market and
software that provides information on performance to network
managers.
Internet service providers, meanwhile, are seeing more savvy customer
interest in higher quality service, such as firewall, encryption and
certificate security for data transmission.
"The awareness level is at such a point now (that customers) are
definitely more sophisticated," said Scott G. Lewis, Internet product
manager at CompuServe, a unit of Worldcom Inc. (WCOM).
Industry leaders also didn't lose any time drumming up interest in next
year's technologies. Talk focused on the greater use of fiber optics in
network backbones and on the evolutionary step to switching at layer 4,
where, for example, a CEO's e-mail can be given a higher delivery
priority than e-mail from accounting.
Today, however, sorting through the array of products and competing
claims remains a time-consuming task for customers. "There is so much
technology and 'fud' thrown at them," said Bay's Carr.
-Mark Boslet; 650 496-1366
Briefing Book for: ASND | AXNT | BAY | BCE | CHKPF | COMS | CS | CSCO |
FORE | LU | NT | SCUR | SDTI | T.BCE | T.NTL | WCOM
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