Berkeley specialises in Gigabit Ethernet switching technology, the up-and-coming competitor to ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) in the backbone. Fore maintained there would be no conflict of interests saying it plans to integrate Berkeley's Gigabit...
Cabletron is due to ship two switching products this week. It supports 10Mbps, 100Mbps and Gigabit Ethernet technologies. The other new product is the SmartSwitch Router 2000, a scaled down version of the 8600, designed to support Gigabit Ethernet...
The Bristol MAN uses Foundry Networks Biglrona 4000 switching routers, and was set up by systems integrator, MiTech. Direct marketing company, Brann has installed a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) based on Gigabit Ethernet running over fibre.
The only way the two topologies can be connected is through Layer 3 switching, which has been described by Per Larsen, Olicom president, as expensive and very inefficient. Token Ring (TR) vendor, Olicom has taken its first step to recognise Fast...
Rainier will support Layer 2, 3, 4 and 5 switching and routing and will allow wire-speed links among Ethernet, ATM and Sonet networks. The idea is to make Rainier work with everyone's switching fabric.
Rufner said although ATM is moving towards new carrier requirements, Ethernet "is starting to make inroads in the MAN as a cost-effective switching layer because of multi protocol label switching [MPLS]".