Juniper jumps into Ethernet switch game
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Wags ports at Cisco Juniper Networks has finally decided to go after the Ethernet switch business. The routing specialist today unveiled a new line of Ethernet gear that will compete with Cisco and others. Juniper is so proud of the fresh systems that its entire homepage has been taken over with Ethernet marketing madness.â¦
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Juniper Networks Inc. on Monday launched an initiative to tighten security between its VPN gear and third-party end-point security products.
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Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR) today announced that the Pacific  Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) has built a regional communications  network using Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway (SSG) 20  appliances.
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Ziff Davis - Trapeze Networks this week will announce upgrades to its wireless LAN switch software.
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Falling prices for 10-Gbps Ethernet switches may spur a new round of network upgrades by businesses looking to provide more speed for bandwidth-hungry applications.
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Telecoms add greenery In brief Juniper Networks accountants were able to toss out their red pens for fiscal 2007. This year's charges didn't get the better of them. The network equipment maker's Q4 profit was up 73 per cent based on â what else â telecoms companies looking for new gear to expand their internet tubes.â¦
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Two new switches from Cisco demonstrate a sweeping change in the company&#39;s assumptions about the technical knowledge of network managers.
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Are cheap Fibre Channel bundles just in time - or too little, too late? As iSCSI gains traction in the market, cheaper Fibre Channel is back on the agenda this week, with both EMC and Fujitsu-Siemens picking up 4Gig SAN-in-a-box packages assembled by Emulex and Brocade. Could this be the long-awaited low-end breakthrough for Fibre Channel?â¦
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Trapeze Networks Inc. this week will announce upgrades to its wireless LAN switch software that make it easier to deliver and manage public and private WLAN services over the same infrastructure.
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WLAN switch market consolidation begins
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By Hochmuth, Phil  New stackables support Cisco's IOS Software Activation feature  Cisco last week juiced up its Catalyst switch line with gear that boosts Power-over-Ethernet support, backup power and failover, and 10G Ethernet connectivity at the LAN edge.
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Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR) today announced its participation   in an interoperability event designed to serve as a blueprint for   multivendor infrastructures offering residential IPTV, multiplay and   business Ethernet services.
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Cisco today unveiled what it claimed is the world&#39;s first Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) enabled IP phone, in addition to a raft of enhancements to its Catalyst switching range designed to boost security, availability and performance.
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By Hochmuth, Phil  When some network architects deploy thousands of LAN ports for users, they use chassis switches at the LAN edge for easier management and failover. Duke University, however, finds better network management and cost savings through stacking switches.
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Voice over Internet Protocol may be about to enter your living room.
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Amimon gets its chips out for wireless high dev
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As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.On Monday, the company is set to unveil a datacenter networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.Cisco is already a leading player in datacenter networks with its&#160;Catalyst series Ethernet switches&#160;and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at $75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco&#39;s Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management&#39;s current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it&#39;s hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.&quot;I&#39;m looking at a little over ten years&#39; capacity,&quot; Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15Tbps. &quot;The capacity to grow is huge,&quot; he said.Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn&#39;t tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those datacenters, he said.Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of datacenters that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale, and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.The network&#39;s role in datacenters is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It&#39;s now the &quot;orchestrator&quot; of the datacenter, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of datacenters want to see total virtualization of the datacenter, which could boost efficiency, they aren&#39;t yet ready for it.&quot;We&#39;re just entering the very early stages of the virtual datacenter,&quot; Kerravala said. &quot;This is probably at least two years away.&quot;Cisco is best positioned to build the core of datacenters because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.&quot;For Cisco, it&#39;s very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack,&quot; said IDC&#39;s Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of datacenters won&#39;t be a walk in the park, she cautioned.&quot;Cisco&#39;s in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the datacenter is and are willing to invest the R&amp;D dollars,&quot; Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco&#39;s peril, datacenter administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the &quot;crown jewels&quot; of the enterprise, she said.