Here is an article from ZD Net on router startups - Beware of the
claims of Nexabit.
zdnet.com
Router Start-Ups Reach Milestone
By Joe McGarvey
May 12, 1999 10:27 AM ET
The quest of high-speed router start-ups to wrestle
control of the market from networking giant Cisco
Systems reached a pivotal milestone this week at the
Networld+Interop networking show in Las Vegas.
At the annual industry event, two Internet Protocol
router makers, Nexabit Networks and Pluris, unveiled
details of separate evaluation trials with national
service providers. A third player in the terabit router
space, Avici Systems, moved into uncharted territory
among the handful of upstarts by actually announcing
commercial deployment of its equipment.
Although modest achievements by industry
standards, the breakthroughs signify an important
step in the development of a new class of products
that have been designed from the ground up to relieve
increasing pressure on data pipes lining the core of
the Internet.
"It has gone to the point where it's no longer promises
and wishful thinking," said Peter Chadwick, director of
marketing at Avici. "It's turning into reality."
Avici announced that GST Telecommunications, a
service provider based in Vancouver, Wash., plans to
deploy two of its Terabit Switch Routers (TSR) in the
West Coast leg of a government-funded research
network it is building in conjunction with Nortel
Networks, Spring Communications and the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. The network project,
part of the government's Next Generation Internet
initiative, is a test bed for advanced applications and
optical networking technology research. Nortel owns
20 percent of Avici.
The fact that the TSRs are going into a
research-oriented network did not diminish the impact
of the announcement, according to Chadwick. "It
proves GST is comfortable with the product," he said.
"They will be looking at if for future deployment in their commercial networks."
Also this week, Nexabit announced that service
provider Frontier Communications is testing its
NX64000 terabit router on Frontier's national
backbone. Frontier officials said the new router would
first be evaluated at speeds of 2.5 gigabits per second
and eventually be hooked directly to Frontier's OC-192
(10 Gbps) optical gear. Nexabit officials say it will be
the first router maker to deliver 10 Gbps interfaces,
which the company plans to ship in June.
Paul Santinelli, vice president of technology and
applications at Frontier, said that moving up to
OC-192 speeds is crucial to the company's ability to
couple its connectivity services with its Web hosting,
voice and recently announced messaging services.
He added that Frontier also was evaluating equipment
from other manufacturers.
Finally, Pluris revealed that it has entered an
evaluation agreement with Deutsche Telekom, the
giant Germany telecommunications provider.
|
