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LAS VEGAS - It's no surprise that Gigabit Ethernet will take center stage when the NetWorld+Interop show kicks off here a week from today. But one trend that's sure to open a few eyes is the attention being paid to simpler Gigabit Ethernet structures. Suddenly, it seems possible to make money with Media Access Control (MAC) chips and the interface cards that use them, and with simple uplinks and repeaters that stay away from the complex routing of Ethernet packets.
Key to this radical upending of the Gigabit Ethernet market is the move of venture-capital financing to startups concentrating on highly complicated backbone switches operating at Layer 3-the routing layer-of the Open System Interconnect protocol stack. This is akin to auto companies shifting the bulk of manufacturing to sport utility vehicles under fears that smaller markets would be commoditized-only to find that higher-priced cars can be subject to the same market glut and the same commodity pricing as low-end ones.
Switches from VC-backed newcomers like Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Prominet and Rapid City Communications all have proprietary software. Adopting it requires a corporate commitment to an architecture promoted by a 30-person startup, points out Nick Lippis, principal analyst at Strategic Networks Consulting (see April 21, page 47).
One heretical Gigabit Ethernet startup, Packet Engines Inc. (Spokane, Wash.), has licensed its own MAC chip design to several semiconductor companies. As a result, many chip and boardlevel players are coming to see that this "simple" market is less crowded-and potentially more lucrative-than anticipated.
Packet, Acacia Networks Inc. (Lowell, Mass. ) and other OEMs in the less-is-more camp are by no means disinterested in complex Layer 3 switching. But they insist that a rational Gigabit Ethernet strategy must build on sharedmedia repeaters and Layer 2 switches before seeking to capture the heart of corporate cabling infrastructures.
"If you start your company in the alphabet soup world of Layer 3 services,you're just looking to get acquired," said Bernard Daines, president of Packet Engines.
Semiconductor vendors like VLSI Technology Inc. and Xaqti Inc., both based in San Jose, Calif.,...