10 Hot 10-Gigabit Ethernet Products At Interop Las Vegas

10-Gigabit Ethernet is all the rage at Interop Las Vegas 2009. As applications become more bandwidth-heavy and networks grow to accommodate the upswing in traffic and the need for speed, 10-Gigabit Ethernet has become a necessity for high performance in the data center. Here are 10 of the 10-Gigabit Ethernet products that are drawing attention on the Interop show floor.

Nortel pulled the curtain off the Virtual Services Platform (VSP) 9000, a high-performance core network and data center switch. The 10-Gigabit aggregator box with virtualization capabilities can support up to 720 10-Gigabit Ethernet port density per rack, or 240 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports per chassis, and up to 27 Tbps of switching capacity in a single chassis, or more than 100 Tbps in a quad switch cluster. The VSP 9000 takes up one-third of data center rack space and provides 10 I/O slots for 24-port, 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ modules, 48-port Gigabit Ethernet modules and 48-port 10/1000/1000-Mbps Ethernet modules.





Nortel said the VSP 9000 will ship in early 2010.

As 3Com plots to re-enter the enterprise network space with its H3C line, the company used Interop as a coming-out party of sorts, showcasing the S12500. The H3C S12500 is a data center aggregation and core switch that offers a 6.6-Tb fabric, can transmit 2.2 billion packets per second and offers up to 512 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and 864 1-Gigabit ports. Expected to ship in July, the S12500 starts at $60,000.

Force 10 Networks showcased the ExaScale E600 virtualized switch/router. The ExaScale E600 delivers 10/10/1000Base-T density for midsize chassis with the ability to cut power consumption by up to 70 percent per port, the industry's lowest consumption rate. The E600 delivers Gigabit Ethernet, 10-Gigabit Ethernet and 100 Gbps of data capacity per slot.

Blade Network Technologies highlighted its new 10-Gigabit Ethernet switch, a converged networking switch for blade servers. The FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) ready, 10-Gigabit Ethernet Blade Server Switch is a new 24-port all 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 1-Gigabit/10-Gigabit Ethernet switch that lets enterprises deploy open unified networks. It offers a single network fabric for data and storage (FCoE or iSCSI), 100 Gbps of data center connectivity and up to 480 Gbps of low-latency bidirectional throughput designed for cloud computing.

Extreme Networks brought out the BlackDiamond 8900 series modules for the BlackDiamond 8800 series switch (shown here is the BlackDiamond 8810). The architecture is designed for next-generation data centers and offers up to 582 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports in a single rack.

Brocade demonstrated its TurboIron 24X switch, which offers 24 ports capable of 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 1-Gigabit Ethernet performance. The compact, high-density dual-speed switch is designed for demanding data center and high-performance computing environments.

Arista Networks showcased its new line of 1U 10G-Base-T switches, the Arista 7100T layer 2/3 switches that include 24- and 48-port models. According to Arista, each model offers auto-negotiating, 1/10G-Base-T ports with standard RJ-45 connectors and SFP+ uplink ports.







The switches are designed for data center service access and offer backward compatibility with standard Gigabit Ethernet cabling and investment protection as customers migrate from Gigabit to 10-Gigabit Ethernet. The 7000T switches enable virtualization and can accommodate network service integration with the Arista Extensible Operating System. The Arista 7100T switches support 10G-Base-T over CAT 6a cabling up to 100 meters, but also support CAT 5e and CAT 6 cabling with distances up to 55 meters.

Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve Networking division showcased its 6600 series of stackable switches, which includes the 6600-24XG (shown here). Announced earlier this year, the 6600-24XG offers 24 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet with 336 Gbps of fabric capacity and 214 Mbps of throughput.

Mellanox unveiled PhyX, a six-port multiprotocol 10-Gigabit Ethernet PHY chip for networking, storage and server systems. According to Mellanox, PhyX supports six channels in a single device, giving Ethernet switches a high-density, low power, flexible design. For server blades, PhyX provides an economical solution for pass-through modules. PhyX is the first device that supports all 10-Gigabit Ethernet physical layer functionality in a single device with an ability to be field upgraded to support Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to 2/4/8G Fibre Channel gateway functionality with no change in hardware.

Gigamon showed off the latest addition to its GigaVUE family of data access switches, the GigaVUE 2404. The GigaVUE 2404 is a high-density data access switch for 10-Gigabit Ethernet data center networks. The 2404 aggregates, replicates and filters traffic flows across multiple passive monitoring tools. The modular design lets network managers deploy the number of ports they need. Gigamon said the base chassis houses eight 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports. It scales to a maximum of 24 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.