Systems and Components: E-Commerce Drives Fast Ethernet in NIC Market

Gigabit Ethernet will fuel the network interface card (NIC) market in 2000, according to a new study by Cahners' In-Stat Group. While Fast Ethernet will grow as a share of overall NIC units, the fastest-growing segment will be 1000Base-T NICs running on CAT 5 copper wiring.

Demand is being driven by businesses upgrading their internal networks and external connections for e-commerce. More than 52 percent of customers surveyed by 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., say their top concern is to solve current bandwidth constraints in their LANs.

Inexpensive, copper-based Gigabit Ethernet NICs are expected to pump up network performance for companies that can use their existing CAT 5 cabling installation, but may not want to invest in fibre channel.

In September, 3Com began a three-phase 1000-Base-T implementation strategy. Phase one helps midsize and large enter-prises verify that their CAT 5 cabling will support 1000Base-T technology. In phase two, set for the first half of next year, 3Com will unveil its SuperStack II Gigabit Ethernet switch. In phase three, set for mid- to late 2000, 3Com plans to extend gigabit over copper to the chassis-based network infrastructure with a 1000Base-T module for its CoreBuilder 9000 platform.