Widespread migration to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) bandwidth is coming, predict IT vendors. This month, Allied Telesis has released new fibre-optic-enabled 10Gbit/s switches, while Systimax is striving to make 10GbE patch panels easier on the eye for clutter-conscious IT departments.
Allied Telesis’ new AT-9400 family of 48- and 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switches feature integrated optical 10GbE transceivers. The vendor said this will reduce the high cost of fibre-based 10GbE aggregation and uplink deployments because no additional XFP modules will be required.
Paul Wray, Allied Telesis senior vice-president of marketing, said he has not yet heard of anybody manufacturing copper-based 10GBase-T XFPs able to use existing Cat 6 cabling systems, and he doubts if they will appear within the next 18 months.
Other vendors said interoperability testing of 10GBase-T modules is under way and will be completed in 2007, with commercial products following shortly after.
Wray said, “Many [companies] will already have fibre backhaul anyway, and who’s to say when those copper XFPs do come out that they will only support distances of only 20m rather than 100m, and be solely for server interconnects?”
Rosemary McGlashon, European technical manager at cabling giant 3M, added that waiting for copper-based XFPs may prove a false economy for companies looking for 10GbE upgrade options. “If anything, while the price of fibre cabling is coming down, the price of copper will go up; copper will not be half the price of fibre as was predicted a couple of years ago,” she said.
In separate news, structured cabling vendor Systimax wants to make 10GbE patch panels easier on the eye. Its VisiPatch 360 System is a wall-mounted cabinet that hides cables around the back to reduce wiring clutter.
John McCarthy, Systimax managing director for Northern Europe, believes that aesthetics are becoming more important in network infrastructure, and stressed that untidy cabling can look more complicated than it actually is.
“Companies do like to show their technology off a lot more and there are more distributed communications rooms with glass front doors around these days,” he added.
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