Richardson, Texas-based Optical Data Systems Inc reckons it will be the first hub vendor to get 25MHz Asynchronous Transfer Mode products into the market. It is in the middle of developing a line of products called AnyCell 25MHz Asynchronous Mode and its message to potential customers is: don’t waste time and money migrating to switched Ethernet when you can leap to 25MHz Asynchronous Mode straight away; it’s probably more cost-effective and will provide a base for future installation of Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks running at 155Mbps or 622Mbps. It has already sold an Asynchronous Transfer wide area network to the US Army for use at Fort Bragg which has 80,000-node capacity but it reckons there is a major marketing job ahead of it to get people to make the investment in the technology. Fear of cost is one the reasons ODS, as it likes to call itself, attributes to the lack of take-up of Asynchronous Transfer, but it pointed out that 25MHz Asynchronous Mode’s cost have been reduced because its chip technology is derived from Token Ring and it can run on existing unshielded twisted pair cabling, including Category 3. It reckons it has brought the cost down $750 per port. And it said 25MHz is ideal for most desktop applications and users, the standard is established and it scales up to its big brothers running at 155Mbps and 622Mbps. The company, which is relatively small compared with the networking giants out there, with a turnover of $87m last year, has made its money by concentrating on the high end of networking for large organisations, and prides itself on having developed only products that its customers have actually demanded. It claims 10% of the world wide modular router-hub market. The first set of AnyCell ATM25 products are available in the US and will be available in Europe within the next 60 days. The AnyCell 1095-ATM25-12T is a switch module with 12 Asynchronous Transfer ports that provide 25Mbps connections to each user port and one 100Mbps TAXI, originally the chip set for FDDI, uplink port for high-speed Asynchronous Transfer. These first products will be integrated into the company’s Infinity hub chassis and it will offer non-blocking and over-subscribed configurations. The second phase of the product roll-out next year will see AnyCell products based entirely on ODS’s own products; the current ones use some IBM Corp core technology in the chips.
