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	Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Flame the author     In this article Introduction WANs Get 10 Gig-E With It Glossary If You're Ready to Buy

Switch and router vendors Cisco Systems, Enterasys Networks, Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks are shipping or plan to ship this year products that support the 10 Gig LAN PHY. In fact, Enterasys shipped us our first 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch for testing last year (see www.nwc.com/1304/1304sp4.html). Although the company's Matrix E1 Optical Access Switch is not a standards-based product, it certainly proved that 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the real deal. Enterasys says it plans to support all four LAN interfaces by the end of the year and will support the Xenpak transceiver.

The Xenpack transceiver is the 10 Gig equivalent of Gigabit Ethernet's GBIC and should make it easier and less expensive to switch from one PMD to another. But the Xenpak interface is three or four times the size of a GBIC, making it difficult to fit many on one card. There is a new PMD, called Xpak, that will shrink the interface, so that it can use existing board designs. Another initiative, the XFP, promises more dramatic shrinkage, similar to Gigabit Ethernet's SFP (Small-Form-Factor Pluggable), but you won't find it anytime soon because the internal board-level interface component that the interface would plug into has to be developed from scratch.

Size won't matter in the immediate future, though. The vendors supporting these standards on their high-end chassis-based switches offer only one interface per slot, leaving plenty of real estate for multiple Xenpak interfaces. Extreme and Foundry will support the interface, though Cisco indicated no plans to support Xenpak (the company has a proprietary board that makes the optics more interchangeable). Keep in mind that until XFP is implemented, all the interfaces will likely use standard SC connectors.

Cisco is shipping cards with 1,310-nm and 1,550-nm PMDs, Extreme supports the 1,310-nm PMD, and Foundry should be shipping all four LAN PMDs by press time. All these will be for the LAN PHY only, with retail prices ranging from $50,000 to $90,000 per port.