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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhg_in_kc who wrote (3376)	5/22/2000 9:58:00 PM
From: gingersreisse	Respond to of 10934

Interesting, they've got the right vocabulary, but I'd be a lot more impressed if they had first tier investment backers (kleiner or benchmark, etc) or sponsorship by a major technology house (Morgan Stanley or Robbie), or alumni from EMC or NTAP. Watch & wait? GSR

To: jhg_in_kc who wrote (3376)	5/23/2000 9:23:00 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

The SOIP concept is very simple. Use an ethernet LAN as the media and TCP/IP as the protocol for computers and storage media to communicate commands and data with one another. Fibre Channel was designed to overcome the throughput limitations, scalability, and connectivity issues of SCSI connections. FC works well, but the written standards apparently had big holes which allowed each implementer of FC solutions to innovate at the expense of interoperability. BRCD FC switches will not work with other FC switches, for example. What SOIP is invisioned to do is provide the interoperability that FC lacks at a greatly reduced cost because the media will be good old ethernet and the protocol will be good old TCP/IP. Gigabit ethernet and later 10gigabit ethernet will overcome the throughput limitations heretofore preventing ethernet from becoming a part of Storage Area Networks. SOIP promises to provide vendor interoperability and reduce the cost of ownership since TCP/IP components are readily available and the protocol is understood by existing IT staff. EMC, NTAP, et al should be able to adapt new SOIP technology into their product set with no problem, if it fulfills its promise. It is the FC switch vendors that will suffer, as SOIP appears to be a disruptive technology. Many of us have been warning about this threat to FC for over a year.