As part of a broader, more aggressive push into networking Intel Corp today released new switches and routers for small and medium businesses, which it will follow up with Gigabit Ethernet products next quarter with plans to carve out a niche in the home. Intel president Craig Barrett, last year said he wants Intel to be the number two networking vendor. To do that Intel will have to move out of the low end market where it competes with 3Com Corp and start stepping on the toes of Cisco Systems Inc – a move that would be helped by acquisitions. More modest in his ambitions than his boss, Intel’s Frank Gill sees the company moving into one of the top four vendor slots and competing with Cisco, which produces for large enterprises, telcos and internet service providers, only on a few fringe products. In the near term, Intel is still focusing on the lower-end and setting up a separate business unit to produce and sell networking products for the home. Cabling is the main obstacle to increasing data transmission in the home, said Gill who is Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of its Small Business and Networking Group, and Intel is looking into connecting the home via cable modems, DSL, particularly UDSL, and wireless technology. But one of the company’s first home products, which it hopes to release this year, will most likely be a routing stack that could attach to either a cable modem or an ADSL modem, said Gill. Intel is furthest along in its development of cable access products – unsurprising as last year it provided cable modems for an internet cable project in Paris, before withdrawing from cable modem production. But Gill denied its foray into cable modems manufacturing was a wash-out. The company managed to work on standards, and now sees the need to apply silicon and bring the price down, said Gill. Intel is also working on UDSL standards, but its development of wireless technology is still at the embryonic stage.
Could acquire wireless networking firm
Intel is currently talking to a number of wireless networking companies and could either acquire a company, form an alliance or ditch the project altogether, said Gill. Intel’s revenues are growing fastest in Fast Ethernet and virtual private network products for small businesses, with only sales for network interface cards growing slowly. In the second quarter Intel plans to broaden its product range further with the release of Gigabit Ethernet products, including server adapters, switches and uplinks for switching and hub products. Intel has yet to release any plans for ATM, but Gill was enthusiastic, saying that ATM arguably handles voice and data in LANs and WANs better than gigabit Ethernet and Gill conceded that Intel would at least need to release ATM uplinks. Aimed at workgroups, the switches Intel announced today, the Intel Express 550T and 550F routing switches are stackable and will be able to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet. The Intel Express 550T Routing Switch has 8TX ports and costs $3,195 or $399 a port. The Intel Express 550F Routing Switch has 8 Fiber ports costs $7,995 or $999 per port; it will ship next month. The Intel Express 8100 Router is designed for use in Wide Area Networks and virtual private network. The router comes with tunneling and 144 bit encryption software and will be available next month priced at $699; encryption software will cost an additional $199.
