While most of the attention at the NetWorld+Interop show in Atlanta has been centered on Gigabit Ethernet, a Sunnyvale, California-based company – GigaLabs Inc – has announced a new technology claimed to provide 1.6Gbps speeds between its new GigaStar switching platform and either PCI-based servers or SCSI storage devices. The technology is based around a simple premise: while PCI-based servers are capable of processing at least 1Gbps of information, the networking technologies that are currently in use are restricted to speeds around100Mbps. GigaLabs has therefore tried to remove this limitation by interfacing directly between the PCI bus on the server, and the GigaStar’s PCI bus. Not only does this eliminate the overheads of converting the raw data into Ethernet or IP packets (and the speed limitations of these technologies), says the company, but it also obviates the need for network interface cards between the server and the switch. GigaLabs terms the technology I/O switching, and has applied it both to the PCI-to-PCI link – dubbed the GigaPipe – and a PCI-to-SCSI connection, the GigaScuz. The same technology can be used to connect two of the company’s GigaStar switches, the company adds. In terms of the physical connection used, I/O switching employs 100-pin 50 twisted-pair copper connections, which the company claims can be produced for little more than traditional two- or four-pair wiring, resulting in far greater capacity at little extra cost. What is currently unclear, however, is whether the approach limits I/O switching capacity to 50 concurrent users – one for each pair of copper connections. Nobody was available at press time to clarify the situation. GigaLabs has applied the technology to two switches, which are claimed to provide network switching at speeds up to 1.6Gbps per slot, at a price per switched port of under $200, the company claims. The GigaStar 100 workgroup switch has a stackable five-slot chassis and 1Gbps backplane to support 40 switched full-duplex 10 Mbps Ethernet ports; a choice of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Fast Ethernet, FDDI, or GigaScuz SCSI II or III uplinks; and the GigaPipe connection. A fully configured GigaStar 100 stack delivers dedicated 10Mbps bandwidth to 160 end-stations for under $200 per port, and can act as a module to a larger GigaStar 2000 switch. The GigaStar 2000 is a protocol-tr ansparent local network switch that delivers 1.6Gbps two-way bandwidth through each of its nine slots, for a total of 14.4Gbps on a non-blocking backplane. Each 1.6Gbps slot can link to a server, peripheral or another GigaStar switch at that speed; be switched into four full-duplex 100Mbps Fast Ethernet connections or a single ATM or FDDI uplink; or cascaded down to as many as 160 dedicated 10Mbps full-duplex Ethernet connections. The GigaStar 100 chassis is $1,600, the GigaPipe is $2,500, the GigaScuz is $5,000, eight switched 10Mbps Ethernet ports cost $1,200, and two switched Fast Ethernet ports are $2,000. The GigaStar 2000 chassis is $15,000 but is free for a limited time if you spend $15,000 on modules. They arrive on October 31. GigaLabs was born in 1988 as Input Output Systems Corp. It is a member of the Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and will offer its users an easy migration to Gigabit Ethernet as soon as the standard is ready, even though it may actually slow down switch-to-server traffic. The first taker for the switch is Cable & Wireless Internet Exchange Inc, based in Vienna, Virginia, which will use it to provide extra capacity for its internet access services.
