[Another terabit player: Nexabit]
zdnet.com
On Monday, [Nexabit Networks Inc.] will announce another $20 million in funding, bringing its total to between $31 million and $40 million.
Wonder if Anschutz will back this horse too?
mark
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Nexabit raises stakes in next-generation router race
In the game of one-upmanship being played out by the next-generation router startups, Nexabit Networks Inc. next week will come up short in the venture-funding competition but maintain its lead in the terabits-per-second tourney.
On Monday, the Marlboro, Mass., company will announce another $20 million in funding, bringing its total to between $31 million and $40 million, according to President and CEO Mukesh Chatter. Rival Juniper Networks Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., meanwhile, has attracted a total of $62 million in funding.
Both vendors are saying they will ship their offerings this year, although neither is saying much now about how its technologies will achieve many times the performance provided by current routing technology.
Such feats require significant funding, of course. Bandwidth requirements used to increase 30 percent to 40 percent per year. Now they're growing tenfold in a year--surpassing Moore's law of doubling semiconductor capacity every 18 months, Chatter said.
"It is a year-and-a-half to two-and-a-half-year project that requires completely different networking architectures than today's. It's just a much bigger effort," he said.
Nexabit, with 13 patents pending, will be able to support 6.4 terabits per second in internal switching capacity in its NX64000 box, due out later this year. Others, such as Avici Systems Inc., have also claimed terabit ranges, but Chatter claims they are not within a single chassis.
"There are those claiming to be terabit, but they hook up multiple, multiple chassis," he said. "That's like me hooking up 20 PCs and calling it a supercomputer."
Nexabit's latest round of funding comes from Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, Thomson Corp. and Hambrecht & Quist Venture Associates.
Nexabit can be reached at nexabit.com. |
