To the Extreme: Vendor brings GigE to metro

Most vendors are moving into the metro area by downsizing their equipment for smaller-scale networks. Extreme Networks is taking the opposite approach, moving beyond its enterprise roots to bring native, gigabit Ethernet capabilities into metropolitan area networks.

This week, Extreme will unveil its Alpine 3800 Ethernet Service Provisioning Switch, for MANs and regional service providers. It marks Extreme's new dedication to the service provider market, underscored by the company's recent creation of a service provider-focused business unit with its own sales force, marketing division and R&D efforts.

The 3800 "at the core, is a Layer 3 switch," said Gordon Stitt, president and CEO of Extreme. "It has services on top that give it the Sonet-like characteristics and functionality necessary to build a metro area network." The switch supports fixed-latency transport, usage-based billing and on-demand "bandwidth by the slice," he said.

A typical Sonet MAN uses add/drop multiplexers to form a metro ring and ATM switches to link to buildings via DS-3 or T-1.

In contrast, the 3800 is for competitive service providers with a data bent. The switch sits in a building or co-location site, linking office parks and office buildings via Ethernet links of 10 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s, 1 Gb/s or 10 Gb/s (see figure).

"What's interesting about this is that it plays on the IP-services side," said Charles Maricle, general manager of Phonoscope Communications, which is testing the 3800.

The Houston-based provider is building the Metropolitan Area Gigabit Internet Exchange, known as MAGIE, which lets ISPs transport local Internet traffic point-to-point without hopping on the WAN or paying to use the Internet backbone.

Yipes Communications offers a similar service, providing virtual LAN services between customer offices, said Ron Young, co-founder and vice president of marketing and business development at Yipes.

Other vendors in this space are making noise, but "they're not even close to Extreme." he said. "We plan to deploy [the Alpine 3800] when it's delivered" in May.

And having strong support from providers will strengthen Extreme's position in the MAN equipment market. "Part of what is going on here is that [Extreme] has identified the beginning of a market swell," said Mary Petrosky, principal analyst with Petrosky.com.