Cisco offering hots up ATM/Ethernet battle

Ethernet's battle with ATM is continuing, with the arrival of yet another variation of the networking technology.

Cisco promises technology for the second half of this year that will bundle 100Mbps Fast Ethernet channels in parallel, to build backbone capacity links.

The Fast EtherChannel technology is being promoted as a migration path to the high-speed Gigabit Ethernet. Fast EtherChannel will aggregate pairs of full duplex 200Mbps channels and Cisco claims it will be able to provide 'multi-gigabit speeds'.

Jayshree Ullal, vice president of the workgroup business unit at Cisco Systems, said: 'Our customers have said they want a smooth migration path to Gigabit Ethernet. With Fast EtherChannel, Cisco is providing an incremental step for safely transitioning their networks through gigabit speeds.'

Gigabit Ethernet will ship this year from vendors like Bay and 3Com, but not from Cisco until next year. Unlike Fast EtherChannel, it will not be based on proven technology.

Datapro analyst Marina Smith conceded that bundled Fast Ethernet channels would offer a tried-and-tested technology as an interim measure, until Gigabit Ethernet had been proven on the market.

But she added: 'Yes, Fast Ethernet is reliable. But anyone trying to use this will need to lay a lot of cable and a lot of switches, with a lot of ports on both (uplink and downlink) sides. It won't be cheap.'

Gigabit Ethernet is also being promoted as back-bone technology to compete with ATM.

Smith said: 'Cisco's direction in ATM for LANs is unsure, so it's pushing Ethernet in all its forms. Whether the world actually needs this one is another question.'