Stepping Up To 10G

It may be time to upgrade the corporate backbone.

That's the way a lot of companies are seeing it. As much as 15 percent to 20 percent of companies are committed to upgrading some portion of their backbone and a "huge" percentage are planning to do so in the near term, said Robert Whiteley, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

After the hiatus following the last major backbone overhaul during the Internet boom years, some companies began upgrading their networks in 2005, but most are beginning a major overhaul now, as applications such as e-mail, video and storage networking raise the need for more bandwidth, Whiteley said.

For SMB solution providers, the picture is not so clear. Many small businesses that upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet are still floating in bandwidth, while the step up to 10-Gigabit Ethernet is a very big step, indeed, in both cost and capacity.

Solution provider NWN, Waltham, Mass., has upgraded the backbone of some of its larger customers to 10G Ethernet, including East Carolina University, which connected its east campus with medical buildings four miles away so that data could be replicated. Chris Ludwig, regional director of practice management at NWN, said he is beginning to see more and more data replication, which is driving a need for bandwidth.

But not all customer networks are at the same place to take advantage of the latest in networking. For another network integration firm, D&D Consulting, Albany, N.Y., many of its clients are still transitioning from Layer 2 and Layer 3 or to Gigabit Ethernet, said CEO Chris Labatt-Simon. Still, customers are upgrading.

The Upgrade Hurdle
While the network backbone usually undergoes many minor improvements in its lifetime, upgrading to a newer technology requires that most, if not all, equipment needs to be replaced. Because of the cost, customers tend to ask: "Is there a real need for an upgrade? Can I get by with what I have for another year?" Ludwig said.

Solution providers install new switches and cards in order to upgrade to Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet. It's not as simple with 10-Gigabit Ethernet since it usually runs on fiber and requires new network cards, switches and routers. Even for the newer standard that runs on copper, connectors have to be replaced.

Despite falling costs and increasing need for bandwidth, 10G Ethernet remains a specialized niche. Nearly half of the solution providers in the March CRN monthly poll placed 10G in the early adopter phase—even though it's considered a mature technology—and only 10 percent were currently selling 10G Ethernet solutions.

It is largely an enterprise play. Businesses with fewer than 1,000 users are not even thinking about it, Ludwig said. While some do data mirroring, most are not yet fully using the capacity in their Gigabit Ethernet backbones. Another solution provider estimated he sees only about 15 percent utilization on the network backbone. Still, 32 percent of the solution providers in the poll said they were either considering or planning to offer 10G solutions within the next year in a sure sign that 10G is gaining steam.

Next: What's Driving Upgrades