<!–#set var="article_header" value="Networld + Interop Vegas:
Revenge of the Airwaves.” –>
Introduction
It’s a mystery, at times, as to why some companies bother to do trade shows. These days there is the usual whining about how the show isn’t as big as last year, juxtaposed with the contradictory enthusiasm for the fact that anyone bothered to show up.
However, even if the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) isn’t quite as packed as it was for Networld + Interop (N+I) last year, the signs are good. You have to believe the crowds that do show up really mean business, and apparently they do.
Like most trade shows, Interop has had to shrink, occupying only the two main halls in the LVCC. Wide open spaces in the main hall belie the fact that many vendors are optimistic about the industry’s chances of a recovery.
N+I is unique in so far as there is really very little in the way of consumer computing products on display here, unlike Comdex, which can be a veritable bazaar of goodies. On the other hand, the networking world is slowly coming to the realization that it’s networking for all these days, from small to big business, and even the multi-PC home. So, on the one hand, you get products and companies that only multi-million dollar IT shops are going to love, and on the other hand, you have this deluge of products that are targeted at smaller environments and budgets, like wireless LANs, cable modems, routers and gateways. There’s no middle ground.
The biggest challenge facing the networking world is education: educating the new user as well as educating the industry about the changing face of the average user. We really have more questions about wireless networking than we have answers. We have a lot more questions about security than answers. We have a lot more questions about storage, servers, switches and network management than we have answers.
It wouldn’t be so bad if networking was still an esoteric niche, but it isn’t anymore. It’s becoming a fundamental part of our everday computing experience. At the risk of reducing the trends to absurdly simple levels, here are the things that seem to be buzzing in the networking world.
Ruling the air waves – Wireless access
Softbank announced plans to put wireless Internet access into Japan’s McDonalds on Tuesday May 7, and there is likely to be a battle by big telcos and interested parties to own wireless hot spots in strategic locations here in North America. It’s really a worldwide phenomenon. Someone’s going to have rule the air waves, because it won’t be long before we all have a wireless LAN card as standard.
Gigabit Ethernet
Gigabit Ethernet is ready for the desktop, and in fact, at N+I, they already have the World’s largest demo of 10GB Ethernet. It seems pricing on the chips that drive Gigabit Ethernet are dropping, and companies like Intel are eager to see the technology migrate from the enterprise onto the average desktop. There are chips to be sold, after all.
“The World’s largest demo of 10GB Ethernet” screamed the banner. Time to move on to greater things as Gigabit Ethernet migrates down onto the desktop.
All-in-one network boxes
Another trend that seems to be developing is that vendors are putting routing, firewalls, switches, servers, and application services all into one box. This type of solution not only targets the growing legion of highly networked small to mid-size businesses, but also makes it easier for larger enterprises to cut the costs of deployment at branch offices and remote locations. In effect, putting the enterprise network in a box for organizations that don’t scale to enterprise levels is an open market.
The wireless trade show
One of N+I’s sponsors this year is Symbol Technologies. Symbol makes a number of wireless products including access points, LAN cards, and wireless LAN cards in CompactFlash format for Pocket PC PDAs. The company is targeting industrial applications and the enterprise primarily, but it enabled attendees to use the number of access points around the LVCC by loaning them a Symbol Wireless Networker 802.11b Wi-Fi card. If you decide to keep the card and don’t return it by the cut-off time of 4 pm Thursday May 9, your credit card gets charged and you get to keep your card.
Therefore, this has to be a boon to any laptop-carrying road warrior, but it has some interesting side effects. First of all, I noticed that some people who had their own wireless LAN cards preconfigured for other services couldn’t get onto the eNET Interop network, even after reconfiguring them, and were forced to stand in line at the support desk.
Having wireless Internet access doesn’t necessarily mean you have room to surf. You still have to find table space and somewhere to rest your laptop, unless you’re just on a PDA kick.
The other obvious thing is the lack of tabletop space to set up a laptop. I don’t doubt that this is the wave of the future, that most trade shows are going to have this kind of arrangement and the fact that there is an obvious demand for the service, but it’s going to make a mockery of walking the trade show floor as everyone struggles to find somewhere to park themselves. It’s strange getting used to the fact that you can just take a breather between appointments and check email and surf the Net without having to rush to a press room, or a bank of email terminals, if they’re available. It’s going to make people obsessive about their email.
The wireless trade show, Continued
So, maybe we’ll find people fighting for laptop tabletop space at airports, hotels, and coffee shops as wireless access points are targeting these places in the first instance.
The Symbol show floor entertainment proves that configuring a wireless network is not only convoluted, but requires a degree of flexiblity that only the lithe can manage.
Making wireless access possible for all is going to be a balancing act. For instance, Symbol makes the cards, but the eNet network was special to Interop. Another wireless ISP is Boingo Wireless, which lists all the access points that are available to its users on its Web site (worth checking out to see what the limitations are for your geographical area). Boingo was using Orinoco cards and bundling them as part of a special package at the show. In both cases, you could end up spending about $100 for the wireless LAN card, and in Boingo’s case, there are different service levels, starting at $24.95 per month, on top of that.
While Boingo offers pricing for per access use of its network, it’s still a pretty heavy expense on top of everything else, but if you are an organized traveller, I can imagine that having wireless access in your back pocket is going to be worth the intermittent opportunities to use it. But, it is still a tough call knowing how to spread your Internet access fees to support your high-speed service, your dial-up account, and your wireless service provider because there ain’t no one-stop shop for all your needs. And there ain’t no gaurantee that any of the three modes of access will be available at your location of travel.
Something has got to give, and I hope it is dial-up in the first instance, but considering how few hotel rooms in Las Vegas offer any form of high-speed Internet access, it’s hard to see who’s going to make the investment to give us air time. I mean, if there was just wireless access in every hotel in Las Vegas, that would be enough to kick-start the wireless boom.
I would have settled for any form of high-speed Internet access, but then, why invest in wires when wireless is such a liberating experience?
Gigabyte’s SR-125 Mobo
Gigabyte was the only mobo vendor we saw on the show floor, although there were a number of Taiwanese and Korean companies peddling their wireless products at the show.
Gigabyte used N+I to announce the availability of its SR-125 1U rackmount server platform. The SR-125 supports dual Xeons, has on-board Ultra-3 SCSI, dual on-board Gigabit Ethernet, and supports upto 12 GB of memory.
Gigabyte had the SR125 1U based rack system board on display in the back room at the booth.
Gigabyte was most excited about the fact that it believes it has the first white box system to deliver four removable SCSI drives in a dual Xeon 1U chassis.
The SR125 comes with four hot swappable SCSI drive bays.
The market for high-end servers is opening up for channel resellers, systems integrators, and VARs. These guys have traditionally had to deal with the fact that the really big server deals usually end up belonging to the brand name OEMs. With more products coming out of Taiwan, the channel guys have products that can compete across the board.
Also on display was this Plumas based board for dual Xeon (Prestonia) chips.
In the same vein, Gigabyte had on display the GA-8IXPDR board using the E7500 (Plumas) chipset from Intel. The board supports dual Xeon (Prestonia) CPUs with 400 and 533 MHz FSB. It has 6 DDR DIMM slots and can support upto 12 GB of PC1600 memory. The Ultra-3 SCSI controller is upgradeable to U320, and the graphics is integrated ATI Rage XL.
Of course, there was also an AMD 760MPX board on show as well for dual Athlons.
To balance things out, there was the GA-7DPXDW-C AMD 760MPX board. It supports up to 4GB of PC1600 memory, dual-channel ATA 100, on-board AC97 software audio, and a single Intel 82550PM 10/100 LAN controller.
HyperTransport – AMD’s Hammer strategy continues to evolve
The HyperTransport Consortium used N+I to announce proposed networking extensions to the standard. In order to move HyperTransport into the realm of high-speed data communications, the consortiums’ Technical Working Group has developed extensions that improve error handling and allow for message passing for larger packet sizes.
The HyperTransport team evangelizing the new network extensions to the standard. From left to right, Jim Keller, Chief Architect for Broadcom’s Processor Business Unit; Brian Holden, Chairperson of the Technical Working Group and Principal Engineer for PMC-Sierra’s MIPS Processor Division; Gabriele Sartori, President of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium.
Seven extensions are being added to protocol. The new features are: a message passing protocol; an error recovery protocol; support for 64-bit addresses; 16 additional streaming and dedicated virtual channels; a standardized HyperTransport switching function; and direct peer-to-peer transfer.
HyperTransport is known as a packetized bus, and it does have little packets of data, but from a logical point of view it is a read/write bus. With the new messaging protocol proposed, now you can have source and destination addresses independent of device connects. This means a HyperTransport bus can act as a highway for network traffic to cross from one device to the next, whereas presently data moves from point to point between components.
HyperTransport has an error detection mechanism, but as link rates go up for high speed networking, the probability of errors goes up. The addition of the error recovery protocol means that your HyperTransport device can’t drop packets.
In effect, HyperTransport becomes an open freeway. A network decice can direct a result to another look-up device without going through a host. In the past, HyperTransport boxes had memory semantics, but the new extensions give it messaging semantics.
It helps position HyperTransport for the world of Big Iron servers. Low error rates for one box might go unnoticed, but once you have a thousand boxes, you are going to start noticing it. Unfortunately, the level of information about HyperTransport is either very superficial and committee-level positioning, or very dense technical data for engineers. However, it is clear that AMD is pushing to position Hammer for future expansion into the server world.
Products like EmergeCore Networks’ IT in a Box kind of hint at why it is important for HyperTransport to interface among the numerous components and devices of the network world. IT in a Box combines a router, switch, server, and application server in one box.
Products like the IT in a Box reflect the challenges that the HyperTransport Consortium wants to meet to give AMD’s Hammer greater opportunities in the server market.
HyperTransport has to clearly provide a path and coexist with everything from PCI to Infiniband in devices that incorporate switching, server, and router components. The new extensions should be available in the second half of this year.
Seagate shows third generation 15,000 RPM Cheetah Drive
Seagate used N+I to announce the Cheetah 15K.3 and the Cheetah 10K.6, and a new naming convention. The .3 refers to third generation, and the .6 to the sixth version of the Cheetah 10K. Seagate’s emphasis was definitely on total cost of ownership (TCO), and hence, the enterprise. However, the 15K.3 definitely has the enthusiast and the power user in mind, with reduced noise levels and the obvious performance benefits.
The new drives feature Ultra320 SCSI and 2 Gb/second Fiber Channel interfaces. The Cheetah 15K.3 is now available in capacities of 18, 36, and 73 gigabytes, and the acoustics are as low as 3.1 bels at idle. Apparently anything below 2 bels isn’t even worth measuring, and at 3.1 bels, Seagate claims people may doubt their drives are actually running because they’re so quiet. In addition, the 15K.3 has 3.6 ms average seek time, 609-891 Mb/s internal transfer rate, and 49-75 MB/s sustained transfer rate.
With up to 146GB of storage the Cheetah 10K.6 is a monster. The 10K.6 boasts a 4.7 ms. average seek time, 475-871 Mb/s internal transfer rate, and 38.0 to 68.5 MB/s sustained transfer rates. Suggested Retail Prices (SRP) for single evaluation-units are as follows:
Cheetah 15K.3
Model ST373453LC/LW/FC (73GB): $939
Model ST336753LC/LW/FC (36GB): $519
Model ST318453LC/LW/FC (18GB): $289
Cheetah 10K.6
Model ST3146807LC/LW/FC (146GB): $1259
ST373307LC/LW/FC (73GB): $699
Model ST336607LC/LW/FC (36GB): $389
Linksys goes small for wireless
Linksys has pretty big catalog of products, and added a host of new ones at N+I. The company unveiled new 802.11a Access Points and 802.11a PC Cards along with new 802.11b products. Linksys has updated the Instant Wireless Presentation Gateway, a product that lets you display PowerPoint presentations through a projector or display and lets multiple users control the presentation through a wireless connection. The product originally supported a maximum resolution of 800×600, but now goes up to 1024×768. Linksys also had an interesting new Instant Wireless USB Print Server and a pretty nifty Instant Wireless Network Bridge.
Linksys’ recently unveiled CompactFlash wireless LAN cards for Pocket PCs.
D-Link displays titanium line of wireless products
D-Link also has breadth and depth in its offerings. We’ve covered D-Link extensively in our Comdex and CES coverage, but this time, we got to see the company’s new look titanium design products finally shown the light of day.
The DWL-5000AP and DWL-A520 access point and LAN card are shipping.
The D-Link Ethernet Bridge for Ethernet-to-Wireless connections, the DWL-810. It’s an 802.11b device to connect a wired Ethernet device to a wireless network.
The big story for D-Link was the launch of the DGS-3308TG Managed Layer 3 IP Routing Gigabit Over Copper Switch and the DGS-3308FG Managed Layer 3 IP Routing Fiber Gigabit Switch. The D-Link DGS-3308TG 6 port 10BASE-T/100BASE-TX/1000BASE-Z Gigabit Switch plus 2 slots for optional GBIC modules and the D-Link DGS-3308FG 6 port 1000BASE-SX Gigabit Switch plus 2 slots for optional GBIC modules will have a recommended price of $3,499 for the DGS-3308TG and an MSRP of $4,499 for the DGS-3308FG.
eSafe – A Linux first
Aladdin Knowledge Systems had announced the eSafe Appliance back in November, 2001, but was showing the available product for the first time at N+I. The eSafe is a Linux-based plug and play content security appliance. Aladdin says it is the first of its kind.
Low cost Linux network security boxes are just starting to appear. In addition to cost factors, the emphasis has to be on ease of use.
Priced at just under $1,000 with the option to use an eSafe Gateway or Mail server on a per seat license, the appliance is supposed to be a low-cost alternative to setting up a PC as a security solution on a network. You connect it to your LAN, configure the Check Point Firewall-1 or mail server, and configure the content security preferences.
It strips malicious scripts, ActiveX, and Java in Web pages. It’s supposed to stop viruses, trojans, worms and zombies, and provide Web site filtering of a database of over 2.5 million Web sites. There’s also file and attachment filtering with anti-spooling, keyword filtering and anti-spam lists.
TDK goes 802.11 with Xbox
While some companies use the Xbox to draw crowds by giving them away as part of a prize draw, TDK used one as part a subnet for a wireless network connected to the Internet. It wasn’t much of a display, but it was supposed to be a sneak peek at TDK’s new generation of wireless LAN products supporting 802.11a/b. TDK Semiconductor provides the chipsets for the wireless LAN products so, it was as much a proof of concept for the chipset as it was a demonstration of another entry into the wireless LAN card and access point market.
Okay, so it was an Xbox. They had us at Halo.
Wrap Up
All right. It’s a big topic to cover adequately. Networking is a monster. Probably the most interesting aspect of networking for the majority of computer enthusiasts and users is the impact of wireless networking. There are immediate advantages to taking your SOHO environment, or your home network, and going wireless, especially if you dread running Ethernet wires through the walls, or don’t really think that Powerline and HomePNA are your cup of tea.
On the other hand, the server market is shaping up to be more interesting as vendors incorporate a number of functions into the server box. Obviously, the HyperTransport Consortium and AMD realize where the sweet spot of the all-in-one-box server market is. It’s going to be an interesting evolution for smaller to mid-size organizations.