Comments on: Interop Vegas, Land of the Inexpensive and Powerful

By: Inexpensive, Powerful and Blindingly Fast - GigaOM

Inexpensive, Powerful and Blindingly Fast - GigaOM — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:16:21 +0000

[...] Leinwand, Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 9:16 AM PT Comments (0) Yesterday I wrote about how Intel processors are dominant on the Interop show floor, proof that networking appliances are more inexpensive and powerful than ever before. We can add [...]

By: Allan Leinwand

Allan Leinwand — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:35:10 +0000

@Michael – I’ve seen Mellanox before. Very interesting technology – hope it survives the coming 10GigE onslaught….

@Silus – I checked them out – definitely worth a look if you’re in the T&M space.

@Victor – amen. Cisco talks about not wanting to be the plumber of the Internet and I get that from a marketing and stock performance perspective. Yet, look at what products dominate their sales (routers and switches). Plumbers make good money :)

By: Victor Blake

Victor Blake — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:17:08 +0000

I just read the older article on network engineers. All I can say is that I’ve been a “network engineer” for 20+ years and it’s never been more desperately needed. There are fewer of us with strong experience than ever before. It’s impossible to recruit people, and salaries remain strong and rising. So a simple economic analysis says that plumbers are still required. And just like plumbing a lot of CTO’s don’t want to hear about it, but it needs to be done. That said, it’s the CTO’s that don’t want to hear about it that loose. Like good household plumbing it’s not exactly what you show the visitors when it’s working. But rest assured ALL OF YOUR VISITORS WILL KNOW when it isn’t working. And many will NOT return.

By: Silus Grok

Silus Grok — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:54:18 +0000

@Allan: Do check them out. D’love to know what you think.

@Alan: I don’t know how many other T&M firms are there, but MetaGeek is. Great little firm. I think they’re poised for good things, considering how the market has changed after recent acquisitions.

By: Michael Schoolnik

Michael Schoolnik — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:53:06 +0000

You should check out Mellanox, which is using its 20- and 40Gbps InfiniBand silicon to offer an end-to-end data center interconnect infrastructure that accommodates Ethernet, and Fibre Channel and costs less than 10-gigabit Ethernet alone. Mellanox’s Virtual Protocol Interconnect strategy will allow any storage, server, or IPC device to connect to a very high speed, low-latency network at equal or lower cost and with far lower costs for space, power, and management.

http://www.mellanox.com
Interop booth # Booth #2307

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:46:09 +0000

Silus

I didn’ know that there was T&M at interop! I recently considered buying used Fireberd T1-T3 analyzer, and saw that there are PC based usb dongles with breakout hubs that do more than a Fireberd could ever hope to for about 5k less!

By: Allan Leinwand

Allan Leinwand — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:03:41 +0000

@Alan – you’re right, for a vast majority of the market you don’t need custom silicon…despite the conventional wisdom of the past.

@click – I’d say that everything from the Cisco 7200 product line and lower is open for disruption!

@Silus – thanks, I’ll check them out.

@rohit – no, not ATM again if we can help it! I’m a bit biased, but I completely agree on the commodity compute + open source networking. Check out http://www.vyatta.com ;)

By: rohit

rohit — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:39:34 +0000

Gaaaah! not ATM again…seriously though, we should see commodity computing + open source routing stacks begin to be practical around 1Gbps line rates. For wirespeed services at 10Gbps and beyond, non-commodity code + merchant/proprietary silicon is required for 3-5 years and then 10G should commoditize as well. server virtualization will require new network dogmata i believe – in the data center and in the ‘clouds’.

By: Silus Grok

Silus Grok — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:18:54 +0000

If you’re looking for a company at Interop leveraging a commodity computer, you should check-out MetaGeek. They’ve build a powerful, USB-powered spectrum analyzer and a data-rich analysis tool… a combo that their competitors are selling at $3000+. But because MetaGeek’s tool leverages the computing power of the end-user’s desktop or laptop, they’re selling their tool in the $300 range.

Anyway… think they might just fit the bill.

By: click

click — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:39:55 +0000

People have been slapping Linux/{Free,Open}BSD on x86 commodity boxes for years; only now has the software and corporate management matured enough to really give traditional vendors a run for their money. In the coming years, there’ll be no reason to pay the exorbitant prices for devices such as, say, Cisco’s 3600 line and below. Access and CPE devices are changing radically. Just wait until OpenBSD has a mature MPLS implementation…

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:15:02 +0000

Isn’t it interesting how XML boxes and appliances with custom silicon turned out to be such a bust! What a bunch of Rubes!