Nexabit will support 6.4 terabit router.
Nexabit raises stakes in
next-generation router race
By Paula Musich, PC Week Online
August 14, 1998 6:00 pm ET
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 www.nexabit.com.
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