cformat

IBM is apparently turning to outside help to bring Token Ring, one of its core networking technologies, up to date.

Details were being nailed down at press time for IBM to buy internetworking switching pioneer Kalpana Inc. for an estimated $150 million, said sources close to the negotiations.

The two companies have worked Graduated bead drop pendant since 1992 on a series of high-speed networking projects, including a deal whereby IBM resells Kalpana’s Ethernet switching.

“Engineers from both IBM and Kalpana have been working jointly on products that would use Token Ring switching technology,” said Val Sribar of the Meta Group consultancy, in Reston, Va. “That’s why IBM wants to strengthen and solidify the relationship.”

An IBM spokesman confirmed the two companies are in discussions, but added it would be “premature” to announce a deal.

Although much has been made of Ethernet switching over the last year, there is a large installed base of corporate Token Ring users also looking to expand their bandwidth, sources added.

Word that IBM wants to extend Token Ring capacity follows a beehive of activity among Ethernet vendors to develop and ship products that increase capacity, including Ethernet switching and 100Mbps Fast Ethernet products.

One potential result of an IBM/Kalpana deal would be development of Token Ring switches that could provide dedicated 4Mbps or 16Mbps per desktop.

The allure of Token Ring switching has also attracted other major internetworking vendors, including hubmaker Cabletron Systems Inc.The founding of a new company starts with a simple but important first step: Quit your day job.

Bobby Tiffany Notes locket and chain and Centillion Networks, Inc. cofounder Earl Ferguson and Selina Loh left their jobs at Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. last year to pursue an untapped market for token-ring switching combined with Asynchronous Transfer Mode.

“The venture partners like to see how committed you are,” said Johnson, Centillion’s president and chief executive officer.

“They like to know they’re not the only ones taking a risk,” he added.

Johnson and Ferguson also spent several months talking to potential customers while running their technical Airplane charm pendant past engineering friends. With positive feedback on all fronts, a business plan sewed tight and budgets planned two years ahead, the founders started approaching venture capital firms, or VCs.

The VCs ran Centillion’s ideas through an even rougher due-diligence gauntlet. “They took it to a couple of their own prospective customers. They brought in engineering consultants who took our design apart, and they ran the whole thing by the senior management of some of their other portfolio companies,” Johnson said.

The entire Tiffany Nature butterfly pendant is not for the faint of heart.

Venture firms often sit on the boards of potential rivals, and there’s certainly a chance that someone along the way could run with the idea themselves.

“It took about five months from the time we first nailed up our business plan to the time we deposited the VCs’ check,” Johnson said.

Working directly with Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Centillion courted two other Tiffany Nature Dragonfly pendant firms: Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital. Meanwhile, Centillion’s founders haggled with IVP for the final deal: $4.7 million in capital for Centillion in exchange for three board seats and slightly more than a 50% stake in the company for the venture firms.

Wellfleet Communications, Inc. has announced a stackable router platform designed to allow customers to start small and grow as their needs change.

Typically, users must decide if they will need one, two or more wide-area connections when buying a router for a remote or regional office, for example. They also have to figure out which kinds of interfaces they may need such Frank Gehry Fish Pendant Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The wrong choice can mean replacing a $20,000 piece of equipment after only a year.

Wellfleet’s Access Stack Node (ASN) router allows users to buy additional units and interfaces as their needs grow. For instance, ASN can connect small, remote sites to a corporate network. Later, users can scale the box to accommodate larger departments or regional sites.

“The problem with current remote routers today is that they have a fixed configuration. And once your needs outgrow its capabilities–guess what–it’s an expensive paperweight,” said Michael Rothman, a director at Meta Group, Inc., a consultancy in Reston, Va. ASN “is a good concept that gives users the warm fuzzies that they can ramp up if needed.”

Competitive pressures

ASN is critical to Wellfleet’s efforts to compete with the recent aggressive thrust into the low-end of the router market by rival Cisco Systems, Inc., Rothman added [CW, Sept. 19].

Up to four Tiffany Notes Pendant supporting as many as 24 network interfaces can be included in a single stack. Interfaces are available for Ethernet, Token Ring, ISDN Basic Rate Interface and Fiber Distributed Data Interface networks. Interfaces for ATM and ISDN Primary Rate Interface networks are expected to ship in the first half of next year, Wellfleet said.

ASN is available now at prices starting at $4,000.

Beta users said ASN was a good option for sites where Wellfleet’s Link Node (LN) departmental router was too much muscle or sites where Wellfleet’s low-end Access Node was too little.

“The LN in an identical situation comes at a 50% premium, and it’s a mature product. It’s time for Wellfleet to move into the lower end,” said Rob Drye, a network engineer at Dartmouth Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Drye said his organization plans to use ASN as a replacement for LN at some sites.

“ASN’s main benefit is incremental growth without needing to figure out what size chassis you need up front,” said Greg Cooper, data communications manager at Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters.

A four-unit ASN stack, which has been in production for a month, is temporarily being used in place of a Wellfleet Concentrator Node router in Watchtower’s central headquarters in New York “We know the central site’s not an ideal place for it, but we figured if it could handle things there, it could work anywhere–and so far it has,” he said.IBM’s Person to Person (P2P) will become by year’s end a full-fledged workgroup videoconferencing platform when it Tiffany 1837 Circles Pendant support for eight simultaneous users and meets the H.320 video compression standard.

With H.320 support, P2P, Version 3.0 will provide synchronized voice and video capabilities at approximately 10 frames per second (fps). (Full-motion video is 30fps.) Transmissions can also be sent over a WAN, such as ISDN.

Currently, P2P users have to use a telephone to get the voice capabilities, and video transmissions come in at only about 1fps to 5fps, offering less than satisfactory quality.

To exploit P2P’s added capabilities, IBM is shipping free software developer’s kits (SDKs) for P2P that are built on its Lakes Collaborative Networking Architecture, which supports H.320 for sharing video, and plans to also support T.120, an international draft standard or data and graphics sharing. the company announced during last week’s TeleCon XIV conference in Anaheim, Calif.

The kits allow Tiffany box lock pendant to extend their existing applications, such as word processing and spreadsheets, to create real-time collaborative work environments across multiple operating systems and networks, said Ed Robinson, worldwide brand manager for P2P.

IBM is bundling P2P with every copy of OS/2 Warp, and P2P for Warp will be compatible with shipping versions of P2P for Windows.

P2P works over ISDN, asynchronous modem, and intercompany LAN connections, including TCP/IP, NetBIOS, SPX, Ethernet, and Token Ring.

Users at Augusta Technical Institute, in Augusta, Ga., are now using P2P over the Internet to share digitized X-rays and CAT scans with other medical researchers. They are looking forward to the upcoming improvements.

“We can put a graphic anatomy chart and the X-ray side by side on the screen, and have a text I Love You lock charm and the chalkboard, while talking to one another. We can also use windows at the bottom of the screen to have motion video,” said Pam Wittke, director of distance learning at Augusta Tech. “It’s really slow, but it’s nice to see the person on the other end.”

Wellfleet Communications, Inc. has announced a stackable router platform designed to allow customers to start small and grow as their needs change.

Typically, users must decide if they will need one, two or more wide-area connections when buying a router for a remote or regional office, for example. They also have to figure out which kinds of interfaces they may need such Frank Gehry Fish Pendant Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). The wrong choice can mean replacing a $20,000 piece of equipment after only a year.

Wellfleet’s Access Stack Node (ASN) router allows users to buy additional units and interfaces as their needs grow. For instance, ASN can connect small, remote sites to a corporate network. Later, users can scale the box to accommodate larger departments or regional sites.

“The problem with current remote routers today is that they have a fixed configuration. And once your needs outgrow its capabilities–guess what–it’s an expensive paperweight,” said Michael Rothman, a director at Meta Group, Inc., a consultancy in Reston, Va. ASN “is a good concept that gives users the warm fuzzies that they can ramp up if needed.”

Competitive pressures

ASN is critical to Wellfleet’s efforts to compete with the recent aggressive thrust into the low-end of the router market by rival Cisco Systems, Inc., Rothman added [CW, Sept. 19].

Up to four Tiffany Notes Pendant supporting as many as 24 network interfaces can be included in a single stack. Interfaces are available for Ethernet, Token Ring, ISDN Basic Rate Interface and Fiber Distributed Data Interface networks. Interfaces for ATM and ISDN Primary Rate Interface networks are expected to ship in the first half of next year, Wellfleet said.

ASN is available now at prices starting at $4,000.

Beta users said ASN was a good option for sites where Wellfleet’s Link Node (LN) departmental router was too much muscle or sites where Wellfleet’s low-end Access Node was too little.

“The LN in an identical situation comes at a 50% premium, and it’s a mature product. It’s time for Wellfleet to move into the lower end,” said Rob Drye, a network engineer at Dartmouth Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Drye said his organization plans to use ASN as a replacement for LN at some sites.

“ASN’s main benefit is incremental growth without needing to figure out what size chassis you need up front,” said Greg Cooper, data communications manager at Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters.

A four-unit ASN stack, which has been in production for a month, is temporarily being used in place of a Wellfleet Concentrator Node router in Watchtower’s central headquarters in New York “We know the central site’s not an ideal place for it, but we figured if it could handle things there, it could work anywhere–and so far it has,” he said.IBM’s Person to Person (P2P) will become by year’s end a full-fledged workgroup videoconferencing platform when it Tiffany 1837 Circles Pendant support for eight simultaneous users and meets the H.320 video compression standard.

With H.320 support, P2P, Version 3.0 will provide synchronized voice and video capabilities at approximately 10 frames per second (fps). (Full-motion video is 30fps.) Transmissions can also be sent over a WAN, such as ISDN.

Currently, P2P users have to use a telephone to get the voice capabilities, and video transmissions come in at only about 1fps to 5fps, offering less than satisfactory quality.

To exploit P2P’s added capabilities, IBM is shipping free software developer’s kits (SDKs) for P2P that are built on its Lakes Collaborative Networking Architecture, which supports H.320 for sharing video, and plans to also support T.120, an international draft standard or data and graphics sharing. the company announced during last week’s TeleCon XIV conference in Anaheim, Calif.

The kits allow Tiffany box lock pendant to extend their existing applications, such as word processing and spreadsheets, to create real-time collaborative work environments across multiple operating systems and networks, said Ed Robinson, worldwide brand manager for P2P.

IBM is bundling P2P with every copy of OS/2 Warp, and P2P for Warp will be compatible with shipping versions of P2P for Windows.

P2P works over ISDN, asynchronous modem, and intercompany LAN connections, including TCP/IP, NetBIOS, SPX, Ethernet, and Token Ring.

Users at Augusta Technical Institute, in Augusta, Ga., are now using P2P over the Internet to share digitized X-rays and CAT scans with other medical researchers. They are looking forward to the upcoming improvements.

“We can put a graphic anatomy chart and the X-ray side by side on the screen, and have a text I Love You lock charm and the chalkboard, while talking to one another. We can also use windows at the bottom of the screen to have motion video,” said Pam Wittke, director of distance learning at Augusta Tech. “It’s really slow, but it’s nice to see the person on the other end.”

Internetworking vendors continue to make moves to appease corporations with large Token Ring LANs that are encountering bandwidth troubles.

While problems such as network bottlenecks and slow response times are well documented in the Ethernet world, vendors have only recently begun to address them en mas se in the Token Ring market [CW, July 25].

Cabletron Systems, Inc. in Rochester, N.H., got into the Return to Tiffany Heart tag pendant last week, unveiling a series of Token Ring connectivity modules for its Multimedia Access Center line of hubs (Mmac) that provides port-switching capabilities without requiring users to modify equipment.

Port switching allows administrators to break large network segments into smaller rings to improve network performance and boost individual user bandwidth.

Token Ring here to stay

Cabletron’s 18-product rollout includes 12- and 24-port modules that support individual port switching for any of four rings supported by the Mmac backplane, as well as two additional rings located on the modules themselves. Two- and four-port Token Ring management modules allow users to control individual ports on up to four rings. All modules are scheduled to ship in January at prices ranging from $2,795 to $10,995.

“It’s clear Cabletron doesn’t want to worry its Token Ring users that it’s leaving them behind with its emphasis on Ethernet switching” in the Mmac-Plus, said Glenn Gabriel Ben-Yosef, an analyst at Folded heart pendant Yankee Group in Boston. “Token Ring is going to be around a long time, and those folks who have to access host data are definitely going to stay with it.”

This was the finding of a Token Ring market survey by Sage Research in Natick, Mass., which found a high level of planned investment and expansion among Token Ring sites. For example, the study found that 85% of 77 Token Ring users surveyed planned to expand their networks in the next 18 to 24 months and many planned to evaluate switching technology (see chart). (Chart omitted)

According to Sage Research, large Token Ring sites are not looking to implement Ethernet technology as they expand, but rather are looking to preserve and build on their investment in Token Ring. “Organizations with large Token Ring networks are dedicated to them and plan to continue investing in them,” said Kathryn Korostoff, president of Sage Research.

Tom Nolle, president of Cimi Corp. in Voorhees, N.J. agreed. “Why would you want to go with Paloma’s Tenderness Heart pendant Ring today when Ethernet is so much cheaper? Simple. It’s not cheaper if you already have Token Ring. Large users such as Fortune 500 companies cannot justify the conversion,” Nolle said.

Easing the Elsa Peretti Butterfly pendant

Meanwhile, users are looking at switching products as a means to alleviate network congestion related to bandwidth-hungry client/server applications.

“We’ve got a lot of shared-access devices on our network and are looking at switching as a way to dedicate bandwidth to improve performance,” said Graham Morrison, project leader at Token Ring shop Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Connecticut in Hartford. While the insurance provider uses Cabletron hubs, it is also beta-testing Centillion Networks, Inc.’s Speed Switch 100.

Blue Cross plans to use switching to boost bandwidth for specific users as it transitions to client/server, Morrison said. “Bursty traffic generated by applications such as Visual Basic is slowing our network down periodically; switching should help eliminate this,” he said.

Cabletron also included a LAN extension module for the Mmac-Plus in its rollout. The Elsa Peretti Open Wave pendant provides collapsed backbone connectivity for up to 28 Token Ring networks. The Mmac-Plus’ s previous limit was 14 rings. The module will be available in January for $13,995.

Grabbing at a deal too good to pass up, top gun token-ring switch start-up Centillion Networks, Inc. is ending its brief solo flight to merge with Bay Networks, Inc. in a stock trade valued at $140 million.

The companies today will close on a deal making Centillion an independent operating unit of Bay Networks. Centillion will retain its original management team, carrying on its mission to escort affluent IBM shops into the realm of switched LAN and Asynchronous Transfer Mode networking.

For Bay Networks, the deal promises great Tiffany Somerset dangle cuff in the switched LAN territory. Centillion’s Speed Switch 100 gives Bay Networks a powerful ATM-based LAN backbone switch that has blazed a trail into token-ring accounts since it shipped last November.

At last week’s formal announcement, Bay Networks officials did not dwell on the switch’s broader capabilities. But the fact that the Speed Switch is designed to handle more than token-ring switching could make it a considerable prize in Bay Network’s legacy LAN-to-ATM migration strategy.

“We see it as complementary, not replacing what we’re doing [with ATM],” said Gary Bowen, Bay Networks’ executive vice president of sales and marketing. “We already make everything but a token-ring switch, and the Centillion technology is strategic to our business.”

For Centillion, the deal caps a notable start-up career. The firm was founded in 1993 and has earned a solid reputation over the last six months for its engineering and customer support, with about 160 switches shipped to more than 100 accounts so far. Analysts and customers expected the company to carry on alone at least to the point of an initial public offering.

“Many other Return to Tiffany Heart Lock Cuff approached us with a similar type of arrangement,” said Selina Lo, Centillion’s vice president of marketing. “Bay had a lot to offer — more than just the money. The offer gives us the opportunity to fulfill what we first set out to do. It’s bigger than just token-ring switching.”

Switching agendas?

Some observers wondered why Bay Networks focused almost exclusively on token-ring switching in its announcement, largely ignoring the wider capabilities of the Speed Switch.

“[Bay Networks] has paid a fairly extravagant price for Centillion, and it’s likely there’s a hidden agenda here,” said Elsa Peretti Open Heart pendant Pigg, director of data communications for The Yankee Group, a Boston-based consultancy. “What Centillion has is really an ATM switch. Bay claimed it won’t get in the way of its own LightSabre [ATM switch development], but they didn’t explain how it fits, either.”

Centillion plans this summer to release an Ethernet module for Speed Switch, and an FDDI module is currently in trials. With an ATM switching fabric at the core of the box, plus native-LAN switching and protocol translation on each module, Speed Switch is a multiprotocol backbone device that can act as a go-between among LANs, hubs, routers and ATM backbones.

Bay Networks can target the switch not just at IBM shops, but also at Cisco Systems, Inc.’s router accounts and Cabletron Systems, Inc. hub users.

Bay Networks Medium Elsa Peretti Open Heart pendant to pull Speed Switch under its Optivity network management system and integrate it into its System 5000 switching hub, among other things. The issue for users then becomes overall ease of network management.

GE Financial Capital Corp. runs a global network based on Cisco’s wide-area routers and Bay Networks’ line of SynOptics hubs. The firm recently installed a Speed Switch to help ease its overloaded token-ring LANs and will add more as the switch proves itself.

Knowing that Cisco will soon release a token-ring switch stemming from its Kalpana, Inc. acquisition last fall, David Murray, GE Financial’s network manager, said, “I’d stay with the Speed Switch just to have it integrated with my hubs.

“If you have to keep things apart, it’s better to split out the router management,” he said. “The Cisco routers are key Small Elsa Peretti Open Heart pendant and exit points to the wide area, whereas the Speed Switch and hubs make up our whole internal network. They handle every single packet that flies around this place, and they need to hang together. The routers can be managed alone.”

CONSOLIDATION in the internetworking business has claimed yet another company. Bay Networks Inc. last week announced plans to acquire Token Ring switching vendor Centillion Networks Inc.

The $150 million acquisition of 2-year-old Centillion, which previously had Return to Tiffany heart lock charm and bracelet non-exclusive reseller agreement with Bay Networks, solidifies Bay Networks’ position as a player in the market for replacing shared media Token Ring LANs with switch-based systems.

The Token Ring switching market is expected to grow from $51 million in 1995 to $481 million in 1998 as IS sites move to revamp increasingly outdated networks, according to the Yankee Group, a consulting and research company located in Boston.

“This fills a glaring hole in Bay’s switching product line and will make the company a force to be reckoned with in competition for the huge number of IBM Token Ring shops,” said Skip MacAskill, a senior research analyst with Gartner Group Inc., a Stamford, Conn., consultancy. “This move gives Bay instant credibility in the Token Ring switching market.”

Some Return to Tiffany Bead Bracelet managers said the acquisition reaffirms their confidence in the Centillion product line.

“It eliminates the concerns about the company’s financial stability and field support,” said Bob Brandner, network engineering manager for Aetna Life & Casualty Co., in Hartford, Conn., a Bay Networks user. “The [planned] acquisition legitimizes for large users the idea of investing in a small company.”

Recent months have seen a flurry of activity in the Token Ring switching business with Cabletron Systems Inc., 3Com Corp., Madge Networks Inc., IBM, and Chipcom Corp. all announcing products designed to lure customers away from shared media.

Bay Networks will counter these moves by continuing to sell Centillion’s SpeedSwitch 100 Token-Ring-to-ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) switch and integrating the same Token Ring switching technology in its System 5000 hub.

Bert Williams, product manager for Token Ring switching products at Bay Networks, said the latter could be accomplished by adding the Elsa Peretti Eternal Circle Bracelet 100’s 3.2-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) ATM switching fabric as one of the System 5000’s backplanes.

The 5000 already has 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps backplanes. Bay Networks said roughly one-third of its annual revenue is from sales of Token Ring networking products.

Bay Networks will Elsa Peretti Round Bracelet provide management tools for both products based on its Optivity network management system. These will ship in the third quarter. Centillion’s switching technology will be integrated in the System 5000 switch by mid-1996.

In addition to dedicated 4Mbps or 16Mbps bandwidth through as many as 24 ports, the SpeedSwitch offers ATM or FDDI links to servers or backbone networks. Centillion said it has shipped SpeedSwitch 100s for use at more than 100 sites. Roughly 65 percent of the units have been shipped with an optional ATM uplink Horse charm bracelet.

Six months after shipping its first product, Centillion Networks, Inc. stands as a textbook example of hitting the rest where they ain’t.

While scores of other vendors tripped over Party charm bracelet other in the race to sell Ethernet switches, Centillion planted a lone stake in the market for token-ring switches. Last week, that strategy paid off when Bay Networks, Inc. bought Centillion for $140 million in stock–a tremendous valuation for a company that has sold about $6.5 million of products to date, according to analysts.

The transaction surprised many analysts since Centillion is known for its feisty independence. Just last January, for instance, President and Chief Executive Officer Bobby Johnson said the company was not seeking a partner.

“But at $140 million, it was too attractive even for a 1-1/2-year-old company like us to pass up,” Johnson said recently.

To put the deal in perspective: Cisco Systems, Inc. paid $207 million for Kalpana, Inc., which had shipped about $330 million worth of Ethernet switches over the course of nearly five years. And Kalpana is still beta-testing a token-ring switch that analysts say falls short of the scope and functionality offered in Centillion’s Speed Switch 100.

So what exactly makes Centillion so appealing to Bay Networks? Officials at Bay Networks speak of the Centillion deal as an initiative aimed specifically at IBM accounts. But the investment gives them much more than that Centillion’s founders started with an architecture that was carefully planned to adapt as underlying technologies change. Conceived as a Tiffany Red heart lock charm and bracelet switch that can be scaled up and down using the same basic fabric, Speed Switch is intended to last many years in existing LAN switching environments as well as in Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks.

Token-ring advantage

Three former employees of Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET) founded Centillion in September 1993. Ethernet switching was coming into its own at that time, as was ATM, which NET pioneered but then dropped.

With several start-up options in mind, the founders decided that token-ring LANs begged all the benefits that switching would bring to Ethernet and that ATM held the key to making a business of it.

“Ethernet switching got the early attention because it’s a simpler proposition than token ring,” Johnson says. “The technology is a bit simpler, the market is much bigger, and the customer base is more accustomed to dealing with small start-up companies.”

Token ring–with its IBM heritage–tends to run in very large enterprises that take a conservative approach to networking change. Startups have a hard tine getting their foot into doors built wide and heavy for the Big Blue entourage.

“But NET has a strong presence in that same market,” Johnson says. “A lot of token-ring traffic runs over IDNX [multiplexer] backbones. So when [Centillion] called on those contacts to sound out the market for a token-ring Paloma’s Zellige bracelet, they already knew who we were.”

Those early discussions helped to hone the Speed Switch design and place it in beta trials. The switch shipped last November on time and with about $1 million of Centillion’s $4.6 million first-round venture money still in the bank.

The company landed $6.3 million from a second-round of venture capital financing in January. That money was earmarked for the company’s expansion in sales through distributors and customer support.

“Centillion so far has been truly unique–both frugal and technically on the ball,” says Kathryn Korostoff, president of Sage Research, Inc. in Natick, Mass.

What’s gotten them this far is the fact they they’re the only ones with a product,” Korostoff says. “It wasn’t until Centillion started getting a lot of visibility that the big companies looked up and said, ‘Oh, wow, token-ring switching. I bet our SNA clients would love that.’”

LANs to come

Token-ring switching is just the start. Before the acquisition, Centillion planned to release an Ethernet switching module this summer, and a Fiber Distributed Date Interface module is already in trials. These products have not been formally announced, and Bay Networks officials will not comment on the plans, but Johnson says the development will continue.

“These are strategic directions we’ve undertaken,” he says.

It is this strategic Return to Tiffany heart lock charm and bracelet, analysts and customers agree, that makes the Speed Switch a more capable, higher end product than others that are focused just on token-ring LANs.

“Token ring was our launching pad,” says Selina Lo, Centillion’s vice president of marketing. “But our business focus overall is to provide the easiest migrations for big Fortune 1000 accounts as they move in whatever direction they choose.”

Users can move from token ring to Ethernet if that’s what they want. “We give them any option, and that’s what sets us apart fro the vendors who will target just token-ring switching,” Lo says.

The Speed Switch is, in fact, an ATM switch, which makes this flexibility possible. Its 3.2G bit/sec ATM backplane connects six slots that can hold modules of any networking flavor. Each module has its own segmentation and reassembly chip that turns frames into cells. These cells travel over the ATM core fabric Return to Tiffany bead bracelet can be converted back into frames on another LAN module.

ATM isn’t for everyone–at least right now.

While Asynchronous Transfer Mode standards are starting to stabilize and products have begun to roll out, Ethernet switches are making their mark now.

Ethernet switches provide dedicated 10M bit/sec pipes to the desktop, easing bandwidth crunches. They are coming to market in droves and flying off shelves into corporate nets. Tam Dell’Oro, principal at Dell’Oro Return to Tiffany mini heart tags bracelet, figures that 1.6 million Ethernet switch ports will ship this year. In many cases, the Ethernet switches support ATM connections, so customers can move to the higher speed technology when they wish.

Cisco Systems, Inc. recently announced that in June, it will ship Catalyst 5000, a switch that links switched Ethernet and token-ring LANs to ATM backbones, while rival Bay Networks, Inc. this quarter is scheduled to release new Ethernet and ATM modules that could turn its System 5000 into a scalable switching system.

And according to Dell’Oro, NetEdge Systems, Inc. has an Ethernet-to-ATM switch with routing functionality in beta now.

For customers ready to move to ATM soon, Fore Systems, Inc., Bay Networks, Cisco, Newbridge Networks, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corp. are among those companies with ATM products already available.

Chipcom Corp. also joined the ATM fray by recently announcing a suite of products, including its ATM-ready ONcore Switching System, a module and backplane kit for the ONcore Switch, a workgroup hub and adapter cards. They are scheduled to ship this quarter.

Messaging Tiffany 1837 circle clasp bracelet

As LAN administratols grapple with switching technology, electronic mail users look forward to switching to next-generation client/server messaging systems. But optimism is being dimmed as Lotus Development Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have delayed shipment of their respective CommServer and Exchange products until later this year. According to industry observers, larger companies, in particular, are giving up the wait and are seriously considering alternatives to the Lotus and Microsoft offerings.

David Whitten, a vice president at consultancy Gartner Group, Inc., said there is a window of opportunity in the messaging market for vendors such as Hewlett-Packard Co. due to the product delays. HP’s OpenMail is a strong option because it is available and supports Lotus cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail clients.

Other products getting a close look by customers are Digital’s MailWorks and Banyan Systems, Inc.’s Intelligent Messaging, Whitten said.

“I [have] yet to speak to someone that’s beta-testing [CommServer], and a product of this magnitude, at a bare minimum, needs nine months of beta,” Whitten said.

“I would say [shipment during] mid-calendar 1995 is extremely optimistic. In fact, [it's] impossible,” he added. Microsoft has some fundamental questions to answer about Exchange, too, according to David Marshak, vice president and senior consultant at Patricia Seybold Group, Inc. in Boston.

He wondered if Microsoft will ever deliver on Exchange, and if it is delivered, how the functionality Elsa Peretti Open Heart bracelet compare to original promises. Early indications, he pointed out, are that Exchange initially will be positioned as a standard client/server E-mail system, not a full-blown groupware offering.

For most users, the more compete routing/switching issues will only begin gathering steam in the next 12 months. Of nearly 160 Speed Switches shipped so far, about 60% have an ATM interface for trunking between switches.

But the switch is being configured mainly as a token-ring device to improve overloaded LANs.

“Centillion’s ATM aspect is not an issue for us now, but I do think it’ll be important to us down the road,” says Harry Gentner, information services systems manager at the Baptist Foundation of Arizona in Phoenix.

The Baptist Tiffany 1837 Circle bracelet simply needed a token-ring switch, and Centillion offered the only solution.

Until it gets to the more convoluted ATM markets that lay ahead, Centillion must make its living among this straightforward token-ring crowd. Analysts, therefore, have hovered around distribution as the single most important factor for Centillion’s survival.

Bay Networks’ copious channels now eliminate that concern, they agree. The question now may be how well Centillion enjoys living under someone else’s roof. The company will become an independent operating unit of Bay Networks, retaining its original management team, which will be given a long leash.

The company’s founders and venture partners did not expect to sell out so soon.

“Our plan from the beginning was to go it alone, to move along as an independent company,” says Geoffrey Yang, a general partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Centillion’s leading backer.

“We weren’t looking to sell the company, but [Bay Networks] gave us an offer Tiffany Blue heart lock charm and bracelet couldn’t turn down,” Yang says.

IVP’s 20% stake in Centillion translates to $28 million worth of Bay Networks stock, which Yang intended to hold. “The stock is more attractive to us than a cash deal would have been,” he says. “With the synergy of these two companies, I think there’s a good ride left in Bay, and we’re going to take that ride for a while.”

For something that has a flat EKG, the Token Ring market sure seems to have a lot of life.

Many observers, such as John DePietro, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass., say Token Ring LANs will simply never become the big-dollar market that Ethernet is.

But some say the market will grow rapidly for some time to Paloma Picasso Loving Heart bracelet.

“The Token Ring market is really going to take off later this year,” said Peter Rubicam, an analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., a New York brokerage house.

Rubicam is not alone in his expectation that Token Ring switching will accelerate. Witness Bay Networks, Inc.’s recent purchase of Centillion Networks, Inc. for $140 million. Or Cisco Systems, Inc.’s Token Ring router/hub, a product jointly produced with LanOptics Ltd. in Israel.

Attention grabber

The reason for continued interest in Token Ring is the installed base of customers who use the IBM networking technology. Analysts point out that because many large companies tend to choose Token Ring, there is significant growth automatically built in. Also, these types of enterprises will tend to spend the extra money to get Token Ring as they think it is cheaper than Ethernet LANs in Tiffany Charm bracelet long run because it is more reliable.

“Sites with both [Ethernet and Token Ring] generally have their mission-critical stuff running on Token Ring, partly because it’s assured delivery on the network,” said Stan Schatt, director of LAN research at Computer Intelligence InfoCorp, a market researcher in La Jolla, Calif. Token Ring’s architecture gives it an inherent level of security over Ethernet.

Schatt said Token Ring offers more sophisticated management features than Ethernet. He estimated that 50% of all Token Ring shops also use Ethernet.

Now Bay Networks, which sells to these customers on the Ethernet side, can also sell them Token Ring products, rather than ceding the business to a company such as Madge Networks, Inc. or Standard Microsystems Corp.

The Centillion purchase “was a very good move on the part of Bay, and it fills in a serious gap in its product line,” Schatt said.

In particular, because the Speed Switch 100 supports Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) as well, Bay has a solid entree into the ATM market. ATM is expected to be a next-generation, high-bandwidth data transfer protocol. Ironically, despite the small number of vendors in the Token Ring market, Schatt said there is little room for newcomers. The enterprisewide nature of Token Ring makes it a complex sell.

Connections count

But well-established players such as Cisco can leverage their relationships to break into the market. Tiffany Notes tag bracelet new 2517 router/hub brings LanOptics’ unshielded twisted-pair Token Ring hub media into Cisco’s Internetwork Operating System.

The router/hub will ship in July and cost $5,995 to $7,995. It includes 4M to 8M bytes of flash erasable programmable read-only memory and 2M to 6M bytes of dynamic RAM.Cisco Systems, Inc. and LanOptics, Ltd. this week will extend their joint development pact with an OEM agreement that allows Cisco to resell LanOptics’ remote access networking products.

Cisco will market an integrated token-ring routing hub that will be labeled the Cisco 2517, according to sources familiar with the deal. The box links remote office token rings to corporate internetworks or the Charm bracelet.

The 2517 is based on LanOptics’ StackNetPro hub and Cisco’s access routing technology. It will support StackNetPro’s extension units, which enable users to add ports as the number of stations on remote LANs increase.

Cisco is targeting the new device at IBM Systems Network Architecture shops that are migrating their SNA networks to distributed client/server environments.

Cisco believes that the device will appeal to branch offices of financial institutions and others that are installing more token-ring LANs than 3174 cluster controllers, according to sources.

The LanOptics deal underscores Cisco’s aggressive assault on IBM’s turf. The firm two weeks ago announced Heart chain bracelet Peer-to-Peer Networking for its routers, signed an OEM agreement in March with Madge Networks, Inc. for a token-ring switch, and announced Data Link Switching software and a channel attachment for its highend routers that are all designed to steal LAN internetworking marketshare from Big Blue.

“Cisco is in a token-ring frenzy, and the relationship between Cisco and IBM is not friendly,” said Glenn Gabriel Ben-Yosef, president of Clear Thinking Research, Inc. in Boston.

Details about the 2517’s port density, pricing and configuration options could not be attained by press time.