The OmiSwitch 6850 comes in various flavors, there being 24- and 48-port versions, each available with and without PoE, said Neil Tilley, Alcatel’s converged solutions manager for Northern Europe. At the entry level is the 24-port non-PoE, with 20 copper ports and four mini-GBIC ports for fiber, plus two 10Gb stacking ports. Tilley said it lists at $3,995, putting it on a par with the hitherto cheapest L3 stackable in the market, HP ProCurve’s 3400YL. He said the difference is that that device doesn’t have dedicated stacking ports. At the other end is the 48-port PoE, with 48 10/100/1000 ports, two 10Gb network ports, and two 10Gb stacking ports, with a list price of $9,695.
This is another example of a networking vendor leveraging increasingly competitive merchant silicon to undercut the competition without skimping on features. While HP has been the lowest-cost option in this class of Ethernet switch until now, there is also 3Com with the 5500G, Nortel with its 5510, 5520 and 5530 switches, and Enterasys with the Matrix C2. The competitor they are all taking aim at is Cisco, with the 3750G.
Cisco is never the cheapest in class, but then it doesn’t have to be, given its market share and customer loyalty. The 3750G has a list price of around $10,000, without dynamic VLAN or support for multi-client 802.1x support on the same port, both of which the new Alcatel boxes offer. You also only get a single 10Gb uplink for that price, so if you want to go higher you have to go for the 3750-G-16TD, with a list price around $19,000, Tilley said.
