HP, Alcatel rev up new switches

Hewlett-Packard this week is expected to announce its strategy for building enterprise LANs with emphasis on strong security and advanced services in edge devices and with less feature-laden 10G Ethernet boxes in the core.

Analysts say this Edge Fabric architecture — based on technology HP acquired from Riverstone Networks — more resembles carrier networks, in which big, “dumb” boxes in the core move packets among edge boxes, where services are delivered. This counters some traditional enterprise LAN models, in which Layer 3 routing, QoS and other features are supported in core boxes. Some observers say the approach could give corporate customers a more cost-effective and secure way to build LANs.

HP’s ProCurve networking division will release the Edge Fabric switches in the second quarter of 2005. The boxes will include eight- and 16-slot chassis, with dual-port 10G and 16-port Gigabit line cards available. According to Mark Thompson, marketing manager for HP’s ProCurve group, the boxes will cost about 40 percent to 50 percent less than the average 10G port — which is currently about $8,000. The lower cost is because the boxes will support pared-down feature sets — Layer 2-4 switching and basic routing protocols — and are not intended to run services such as WAN access, VPN or intrusion detection, or deep packet inspection.

“We aren’t taking the Swiss-Army-knife approach” on the Edge Fabric boxes, Thompson said, referring to Cisco’s Catalyst 6500, which can fill many roles.

Over the past two years, HP’s ProCurve group has defined its intelligent edge strategy with wiring closet switches that support 802.1X and policy-based user authentication (ProCurve’s Identity Driven Management architecture), wireless LAN switches and management software, QoS and network management features. In 2005, HP plans to introduce technology in ProCurve switches, letting them limit the bandwidth available to computers suspected of having a virus or worm.

With Edge Fabric, Thompson said, “the three-tier model” — LAN access, distribution, and core layers — “mutates into a two-tier framework, where you’ll have edge devices and interconnects between those devices.”

By focusing on passing packets in the LAN core, Thompson said the emphasis is on availability, which is where the Riverstone technology comes in. Before HP’s acquisition of the technology, Riverstone had been developing an enterprise switch with redundant fabrics and aimed at high-bandwidth LAN backbones.

“It’s a bold idea,” said Max Flisi, an analyst with IDC on the Edge Fabric concept. “The one caveat for them will be how to present this to customers.” With Cisco and its competitors constantly packing features into switches, selling boxes for the LAN core with an emphasis on simplicity might be tough. “People may have invested money in building an intelligent infrastructure (in the core). Then to have (HP) saying that that is not useful anymore … might scare some people.”

The Edge Fabric switches should boost HP’s momentum in the modular LAN switch market, observers say. According to Synergy Research Group, HP was second to Cisco Systems in the number of modular switch ports shipped in the first half of 2004 (with 9.4 percent vs. Cisco’s 74 percent market share). HP sold more modular switches than rivals Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, and Nortel by almost three-to-one. HP’s modular switch ports also average about 70 percent less than the industry-average cost for a modular switch port, Synergy said.

HP this week also is debuting a new LAN aggregation switch with all 10G connections. The ProCurve 6400 series includes two eight-port boxes with either all copper (10GBase-CX4) or fiber (10GBase-LX) connections.

The boxes are aimed at aggregating 10G uplinks from wiring closets, or for connecting data center switches or servers. HP also announced the availability of 10G Ethernet network adapters — from S2IO — on its 9000 PA-RISC and Integrity Itanium servers.

Also on the 10G front this week, Alcatel SA is introducing a family of Layer 3 workgroup switches called the OmniSwitch 6800 that feature 10Gbps uplinks.

The OmniSwitch 6800-24 has 24 10/100/1000M bit/sec Ethernet ports, with four of those ports configurable for copper or fiber uplinks. It is designed to be complementary to the OmniSwitch 6800-48, a 48-port switch with a slot for optional one- or two-port 10G bit/sec uplinks. Up to eight of these two-switch models can be stacked in any mix to give customers needed port density.

The new switches let Alcatel users link a wiring closet directly to a core LAN switch with 10G Ethernet. Competitors 3Com, Cisco, Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, and HP announced similar offerings earlier this year.

The average corporate wiring closet supports between 80 and 90 access ports and two uplinks, said Brian Witt, director of product marketing for Alcatel’s LAN switching, so these switches can meet this mainstream need.

The third switch in the family is the OmniSwitch 6800-U24 with 24 access ports that can be either fiber or copper. A slot on the box can be filled with either the one- or two-port 10Gbps uplink card. Witt said Alcatel envisions this as an aggregation switch to pull together traffic for passing on to core switches and routers. For smaller networks, the OmniSwitch 6800-U24 could act as a core switch, he said.