Lucent arms for campus assault Low-cost routing switches aimed at Cisco, Nortel.
By DAVID ROHDE
AND JEFF CARUSO
Network World, 04/12/99
CONCORD, MASS. - Lucent this year is expected to
overhaul its campus switching family with devices
aimed squarely at rivals such as Cisco, Nortel
Networks and 3Com.
Lucent is planning two routing switches - the campus
Cajun P660 and backbone P880 - that will give
customers greater port density, Gigabit Ethernet
support, quality-of-service (QoS) control and lower
per-port prices, especially on 10/100M bit/sec
connections, according to users briefed on the plans.
Lucent declined to comment on impending
announcements, but users say they've been told the
17-slot P880 features 24-port Ethernet switch cards
for a maximum of 384 Ethernet connections. The box
is designed to keep up with big next-generation routing
switches, such as the Cisco Catalyst 8540 and
Nortel's recently unveiled Accelar 8000.
The six-slot P660 is based on the same chassis as
Lucent's current flagship P550 multilayer Ethernet
switch. The box also will feature 24-port cards for up
to 144 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet connections.
The P660 and P880 also will feature Gigabit Ethernet
modules that can connect the switches and aggregate
Ethernet connections with fiber backbones. The
modules reportedly support four to eight Gigabit
Ethernet ports per card, with the P880 supporting a
maximum of 64 Gigabit Ethernet ports and the P660
handling up to 24 Gigabit Ethernet links.
Ed Packer, manager of network services for Cirent
Semiconductor in Orlando, says he's intrigued by the
higher port density of the P660. "Any time you have
greater port density, that's a good thing," he says,
citing the multiplying number of boxes at his facility.
Packer, who currently has 50 P550 Layer 2/Layer 3
switches installed, says the P880 will feature a 135G
bit/sec backplane. The 46G bit/sec P550 currently
maxes out at 120 Layer 2 ports or 72 Layer 3 ports.
Under Lucent's overhaul plan, code-named Cajun II,
the P550 will receive hardware and software
upgrades. For example, Lucent is considering a new
48-port 10/100M bit/sec Ethernet module for the
P550 with a target price of less than $100 per port,
according to an internal Lucent document obtained by
Network World. That document also confirms plans
for the two bigger switches.
The P880 leapfrogs Nortel's Accelar 8000 and
Cisco's Catalyst 8540 multilayer routing switch in
terms of the number of available payload slots - 17 for
Lucent compared with 13 for Cisco and 10 for Nortel.
But otherwise, many of the P880 features match those
of big multilayer switches already shipping from these
two vendors, as well as those from 3Com, Foundry
and others.
For example, the P660 and P880, and possibly the
new software release for the P550, will support the
802.1p QoS standard.
But for Lucent, building a following by adding features
similar to those offered by competitors will be tough,
according to Dell'Oro Group, a market research firm
in Portola Valley, Calif. That's because Lucent only
holds a 2.1% market share in Layer 3 switched
Ethernet sales, Dell'Oro Group says.
Lucent is expected to try to compete on cost. In one
indication of its pricing strategy, Lucent last week
relaunched another product, the Cajun M770, as a
combination ATM and Ethernet switch using
dual-domain cell and frame switch fabrics, supporting
up to 105 OC-3 ports for each protocol.
Lucent is positioning the M770, originally announced
in October 1998, as its first true enterprise ATM
switch. The box is priced as low as $29,000 for its
minimum configuration of 15 OC-3 ports. The M770
supports features similar to those supported by FORE
Systems' ASX-4000 ATM switch, but Lucent's price
is half that of FORE's, says John Morency, director of
network business practice for Renaissance
Worldwide, a consulting firm in Boston. "This is one
vendor that's finally giving FORE a run for its money in
the ATM backbone," Morency says.
Lucent may have little choice but to push aggressively
on per-port pricing for its Cajun line of LAN switches
because of its lack of installed base and falling market
prices (see The Scoop, this page).
Cajun - Lucent's brand name for Ethernet and ATM
switching products for the campus - is derived from
one of Lucent's data acquisitions, former Gigabit
Ethernet start-up Prominet Corp. Right now Cajun
switches are among the most expensive in the market.
For the fourth quarter of 1998, Dataquest estimates
Lucent's revenue in this area at $1,955 per port, higher
than Cisco's $1,377 per port and Nortel's $1,891 per
port.
This gives Lucent an 8% revenue chunk of the Gigabit
Ethernet switch market, Dataquest says. "The
Prominet box was a first-generation [Gigabit] Ethernet
switch, but the world has moved beyond that," says
Michael Speyer, associate director of network
solutions at The Yankee Group in Boston. "If they're
going to continue to play in the core of the enterprise,
they're going to have to have a much bigger box."
Early Lucent users say much depends on their own
applications.
For example, California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena links hundreds of PCs through P550
switches, binding the PCs to act as a supercomputer.
The next generation of that supercomputer will use the
latest processors, so Caltech will need switches that
can provide higher bandwidth, says Thomas Sterling,
principal scientist at Caltech. o |
