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Survivor's Guide to 2007: Network Infrastructure: Page 2 of 9

Unified Communications, as discussed on page 48, will require more reliable transport of real-time data over a wider area. More than just VoIP, UC can enhance collaboration and communication, particularly with a distributed or mobile workforce, but the infrastructure has to support it. The raw bandwidth must be available, but more importantly, end-to-end latency and jitter must be low and constant. The Dell'Oro Group expects Ethernet port growth to increase to 324 million by 2010, with the lion's share being Gigabit Ethernet. That means 10 Gigabit Ethernet gear--for which pricing is still high, ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 without optics for a switch module--will be needed to aggregate traffic into the core network.

Increasing bandwidth isn't always the best way to solve network bottlenecks. Chatty network protocols, like network file sharing and real-time communications, gobble up the wire, limiting maximum real-world capacity to a level well below rated throughput. Bandwidth-management techniques, such as queuing and prioritization, can boost application performance, but they can't solve WAN bandwidth woes alone.

Organizations are straining to support remote offices, whether down the street or across the country. Adding bandwidth is far more costly than beefing up the LAN, hence bandwidth constraints. Techniques such as byte- and block-level compression have long been offered as a way to eke out more WAN bits per second, but technical advances in data reduction and application optimization can increase performance by a factor of 10 to 20 times. See nwc.com/2006/1221 for more on data reduction.

AFEs often reside next to specific servers, such as Web servers or databases, and perform TCP compression and optimization, SSL off-loading and bulk compression, and they can complement data reduction technologies.

In cases where extra bandwidth is required, other new WAN technologies, including Carrier Ethernet, offer more bits per buck. There are two critical requirements for using Carrier Ethernet. The first is proximity: In many cases, Carrier Ethernet is available only in major metropolitan areas. We expect to see expansion into smaller markets in 2007. The next consideration is wiring between the local carrier's PoP and your building: Carrier Ethernet over copper, TDM circuits and other conventional WAN services are available on a limited basis, but not at the speeds available over fiber, which can reach 1 Gbps or higher.