• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • Stephen Foskett
      • My Publications
        • Urban Forms in Suburbia: The Rise of the Edge City
      • Storage Magazine Columns
      • Whitepapers
      • Multimedia
      • Speaking Engagements
    • Services
    • Disclosures
  • Categories
    • Apple
    • Ask a Pack Rat
    • Computer History
    • Deals
    • Enterprise storage
    • Events
    • Personal
    • Photography
    • Terabyte home
    • Virtual Storage
  • Guides
    • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • The iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • The iPad Exchange ActiveSync Guide
      • iPad Exchange ActiveSync Troubleshooting Guide
    • Toolbox
      • Power Over Ethernet Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix WWN Calculator
      • EMC Symmetrix TimeFinder DOS Batch File
    • Linux Logical Volume Manager Walkthrough
  • Calendar

Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Understanding the accumulation of data

You are here: Home / Everything / Enterprise storage / Who Will Capture the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Crown?

Who Will Capture the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Crown?

December 19, 2008 By Stephen 3 Comments

Lego Chess Board

Today, Brocade announced that it has completed its acquisition of Foundry Networks.  This is just the latest move in the strategic game to control the next generation of Ethernet, and possibly all local connectivity, including storage. Although 1 Gb Ethernet, 4 and 8 Gb Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand are all still going strong, the attention of the industry, the pundits, and the prognosticators (myself included) is firmly fixed on enhanced 10 Gb Ethernet. So Brocade’s move seems especially relevant to the core question of which companies will thrive and which will fail in a 10 Gb world.

Cisco is, as always, the big player everyone is gunning for. They created a subsidiary, Nuova, to develop a next-generation architecture, then absorbed the company in April. The result of Nuova’s work is Cisco’s Nexus line of data center switching products as well as much contribution to enhancements to Ethernet, known as Data Center Bridging (DCB) to the IEEE, Data Center Ethernet (DCE) to Cisco, and Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) to others. The whole Nuova episode worked out quite well for Cisco, and they are well-positioned in the next-generation Ethernet game.

Although the fight to control the next generation of datacenter I/O can sometimes seem like a two-way battle between Cisco and Brocade, there are many players involved:

  • Woven Systems launched its second-generation product in October. Aimed squarely at the largest data centers, the Woven line sells at bargain prices and expands incrementally, maintaining performance, according to the company.
  • Force10 has also found success selling a complete line of 10 Gb Ethernet products, from the core data center to the edge.
  • HP’s ProCurve line is mostly focused on smaller businesses, but the number-two supplier of networking hardware shouldn’t be discounted in this horse race!
  • Arista Networks is another dark horse. With ex-Cisco “Data Center 3.0 commander” Jayshree Ullal and ex-Sun Andy Bechtolsheim, Arista has so far played its 10 Gb song to a cloud computing refrain. But the company reportedly has strong technology, and could be a contender in the converged I/O space as well.

This playing field is wide open. I expect Brocade and Cisco to be major players over the next few years, and that HP will acquire one of the other players at some point to add to their ProCurve line. But no matter who wins, the dominance of 10 Gb Ethernet is a safe bet.

You might also want to read these other posts...

  • Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From…
  • How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12
  • How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier
  • Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!
  • Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 10 gigabit Ethernet, Arista, Brocade, CEE, Cisco, convergence, DCB, DCE, Ethernet, FCoE, Force10, Foundry, HP, network storage, Nuova, ProCurve, san storage, storage area network, Sun, Woven

Primary Sidebar

Don’t start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don’t. They’ll make you look like chopped liver.

Harlan Ellison

Subscribe via Email

Subscribe via email and you will receive my latest blog posts in your inbox. No ads or spam, just the same great content you find on my site!
 New posts (daily)
 Where's Stephen? (weekly)

Download My Book


Download my free e-book:
Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts!

Recent Posts

How To Install ZeroTier on TrueNAS 12

February 3, 2022

Scam Alert: Fake DMCA Takedown for Link Insertion

January 24, 2022

How To Connect Everything From Everywhere with ZeroTier

January 14, 2022

Electric Car Over the Internet: My Experience Buying From Vroom

November 28, 2020

Powering Rabbits: The Mean Well LRS-350-12 Power Supply

October 18, 2020

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020

Running Rabbits: More About My Cloud NUCs

September 21, 2020

Introducing Rabbit: I Bought a Cloud!

September 10, 2020

Remove ROM To Use LSI SAS Cards in HPE Servers

August 23, 2020

Test Your Wi-Fi with iPerf for iOS

July 9, 2020

Symbolic Links

    Featured Posts

    A Complete List of VMware VAAI Primitives

    November 10, 2011

    Go Get a ProtonMail Account and Protect Your Online Life!

    July 19, 2017

    Microsoft’s Overlooked Innovation

    February 15, 2010

    The iPhone Revolution 10 Years Later

    January 9, 2017

    The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

    November 9, 2018

    A High-Tech Water Heater? Yep! Introducing the A. O. Smith Vertex

    November 15, 2012

    United Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Butt-In-Seat Economy Plus Review!

    November 13, 2012

    Instapaper for iPad and iPhone Enhances My Web World

    June 1, 2010

    Scaling Storage At The Client

    November 25, 2013

    Hands-On Review: Unicomp Spacesaver M Keyboard for Mac

    July 3, 2012

    Footer

    Legalese

    Copyright © 2022 · Log in