14 DAY TRIAL // xtreme Networks has just announced new features for its upcoming Ethernet switches, that will make the transition between time-division multiplexing to Internet Protocol technologies inside corporate and enterprise networks.
The company is trying to outpace its most fierce competitors on the networking market, Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks. Extreme will deliver new software and hardware modules to be bundled with its edge and metro switches, that will enable Provider Backbone Bridging Traffic Engineering capabilities. The new technology is in fact a stripped-down version of the Ethernet protocol that had the spanning-tree protocols removed in order to allow an Ethernet switch to pose as a digital cross-connect that supports all the types of traffic flows that are most common in carrier-class networks.
"This provides a level of determinism that has been missing in Ethernet in the past," said Peter Lunk, director of service provider marketing for Extreme. According to market watcher Tom Nolle, president of CIMI, the top ten Internet Providers are currently testing the new technology. Moreover, it is alleged that businesses will also make the transition to the new networking gear in a short interval.
The Provider Backbone Bridging Traffic Engineering technology is built on top of the IEEE 802.1ah standard, that relies on encapsulated media-access control blocks in order to create bridges between multiple provider backbones. The technology has been initially developed by Nortel, but it has become widely adopted because of its enhanced performance.
The most important players on the enterprise networking market are currently taking another approach at creating backbone bridges. Both Cisco and Juniper Networks are supporting multi-protocol label switching to make the transition between provider backbones. According to Lunk, using the multi-protocol label switching is increasing costs up to 50 percent as compare to Extreme's technology.
Extreme Networks has demonstrated their new technology at the CeBIT expo that took place until yesterday in Hanover, where they managed to link other companies' switches to the Provider Network Controller of Soapstone Networks. The company is currently shipping its Extreme's Black Diamond 12804R metro switch with the Extreme XOS release 12.1 as a PBB-TE supporting product. However, the technology is reserved for corporate businesses only, given the fact that the device sells for prices starting at $80,000.