Gigabit Ethernet express on track

Electronic News, Nov 25, 1996 by Cynthia Bournellis

Mountain View, Calif.--Gigabit Ethernet is coming. Next quarter, a number of networking companies will start shelling out Gigabit Ethernet hardware and related software. These products will make an even bigger splash at Networld Interop in Las Vegas next spring.

For most of 1996, Gigabit Ethernet has been the buzz in the industry. Many people are talking about it and investing in it. The acceptance of Gigabit Ethernet made its mark this fall when Cisco Systems spent $220 million to buy a new start-up called Granite Systems, Inc., a crucial move Cisco made in order to expand their backbone switching options (EN, Sept. 9).

Cisco isn't the only company salivating at the possible prospects Gigabit Ethernet brings. Bay Networks, 3Com, Fore Systems and Cabletron are some of nearly 50 companies, along with more than 200 people participating in efforts to standardize Gigabit Ethernet. Last May, the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance was formed in order to submit technical proposals to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 standards committee to speed up the standards process.

The committee met this month in Vancouver, Canada, to present for the final time new technical proposals for Gigabit Ethernet. Their goal: present a first draft of the standards by January, 1997. To date, a number of proposals are fairly stable such as the operation of the Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC) interface and the operation of the physical coding sublayer. The coding scheme is similar to the alphabet in that it is a way of forming words that are common to Fibre Channel, except the codes for Ethernet are run faster than Fibre Channel codes, which are 850 megabits per second. "We are taking the 8-bit and 10-bit codes used in the Fibre Channel subset and putting them into Gigabit Ethernet, which is 1,000 Mbps," said Michael Frazier, chairman of the IEEE 802.3z task force and a network architect at Sun Microsystems.

The main proposals presented at the IEEE meeting this month dealt with the MAC, the media-independent interface and the physical coding sublayer. A copper physical layer proposal was presented for 100 meters of category 4 unshielded twisted-pair cable. Concerns were raised over copper cable lengths of 20 meters, for short-term requirements. Another proposal raised the question of how to do Gigabit Ethernet over fiber optic links of zero to three kilometers. Users also presented their requirements and inputs on cabling distances.

Meanwhile, Gigabit Ethernet activities continued two weeks ago when the industry descended upon Washington, D.C., for the Next Generations Networks trade show.

Feedback this year from a number of Gigabit Ethernet proponents suggests that many end-users are ready, willing and able to adopt the technology. "Our server customers said they could use Gigabit Ethernet now, with implementing it in high-end workstations in three years," said Sun's Mr. Frazier, who added that Sun is being very aggressive in the area of Gigabit Ethernet adapter cards.

When products become available, customers will look at Gigabit Ethernet as a serious alternative to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology. "It's simple, fast and cheap," said Don Miller, a networking analyst at Dataquest. He said Gigabit Ethernet will be an early-adopter technology, with very little resistance, primarily because it does not come with the baggage of software standards, as does ATM. And because Gigabit Ethernet serves as a faster pipe for delivering data, it solves bandwidth congestion.

Gigabit Ethernet is also expected to be a godsend for information systems managers who are too busy to become experts at myriad technologies such as Fibre Channel, High Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI), Frame Relay, ISDN, etc. "They will feel more comfortable with a technology that sounds more like Ethernet," said Trudy Barker, a LAN/WAN analyst at Dataquest.

It appears that the future looks remarkably bright for Gigabit Ethernet, so much so that Dataquest forecasts shipments of Gigabit Ethernet ports will skyrocket from 46,000 units in 1997 to 3.5 million units by the year 2000, with revenues exceeding $2 billion by then.

With predictions like that, it's no wonder a herd of new companies focusing on Gigabit Ethernet technologies have been coming out of the woodwork. Many of them have been led by engineers who have left lucrative positions to stake their Gigabit Ethernet claim. This year alone, more than 10 new start-ups were formed in Silicon Valley; about 50 have been found nationwide. In addition to Granite Systems, which was formed last year by former Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, other promising start-ups include Packet Engines, Prominet, Accton Technology, Extreme Networks and Alteon.

Each start-up has its own strategy, technologies and stories to tell. Eager to listen and dole out the dough is the venture capital community. Only six months old, Rapid City Communications initially talked four firms into handing over $6.3 million for the development of Gigabit Ethernet intranet switches. Rapid City is currently in talks with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell regarding a second round of funds, in addition to acquiring private monies. But this time, the CEO and co-founder of Rapid City, Joe Kennedy, is more interested in acquiring private funds. "We are investigating the possibility of a private placement, as part of our strategy to form distribution partnerships," said Mr. Kennedy, a former CEO of Hughes LAN Systems.