Nortel moves in 'big iron' for new switches

By Adam Gifford

Last century two new modes of communication, railways and telephones, developed long networks of metal and switches spanning continents.

In the waning light of this century, telecommunications equipment giant Nortel Networks chose to launch its new range of switches in the Australian Technology Centre in Sydney, a vast Victorian brick building which was formerly the Redfern Railway workshops.

In the rail world, switching is used to get the most value from the system - which can mean sending the coal wagons into a siding so the passenger express can go through without delay.

The equivalent in today's computer networks is to be able to tell what data is going through the wires, what priority it should be given, and getting it to its destination without interruption.

That's the ideal Nortel and its competitors are working towards.

Region director Steve Rust said Nortel, which last year bought the number two player in the computer switching and routing market, Bay Networks, is moving the switching onto silicon.

He said Nortel's vision is to build powerful unified networks which are simple to use, and create a platform for future applications which integrate telephony, data and video over Internet protocols (IP).

Such applications could include integrating call centres with the worldwide Web, so when a customer clicked on a help button inside their Web browser, instead of getting another text screen they would get through to a live operator.

Further down the line that session could happen with a video conferencing link through the browser.

"The picture will be perfect, the speech clear as a bell. You can't do that today because the underlying infrastructure won't support it," Mr Rust said.

"What it all means to our customers is competitive advantage. If you are first to market with one of these applications or build a far simpler one, it will give you an enormous edge as a supplier."

The products Nortel launched last week are extensions to its Accelar 1000 series of routing switches, which account for more than half the market for layer 3 switches, used to connect devices in data centres where high-speed, high-throughput switching is needed.

The Accelar 8000 edge switch module is being marketed as an application-optimised platform for true data, telephony and video integration. It includes 48 auto-sensing 10/100 ports for desktop connectivity and can be put into comes in a 6-slot or 10-slot chassis.

The switch is capable of speeds of 50 gigabyte per second today, scaling to 256 Gbps in future.

The Accelar 700 series are server switches which provide intelligent load balancing for Web servers and IP networks.

By examining the packets coming through, the switches can give priority to applications such as commerce applications or voice. This should allow network administrators to get nearer the goal of policy-enabled networks, important in getting costs down.

Mr Rust said the Accelar 8000 can be seen as a return to the days of "big iron" in the data centre.

"Our view of the world is it's all going IP and if there's a reduction in the different protocols you can put more switching.

"The beauty of switching is it's silicon based, it's very cheap in comparison, it's very reliable and very fast.

"Routers are very complex and therefore more expensive to maintain and they're slower because they're software based. On silicon, no one's going to tamper with it and it's cheaper to manufacture.

* Adam Gifford flew to Sydney courtesy of Nortel.