Anybody Want a High-Speed Director?

As expected, McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) unveiled its long-awaited Intrepid 10000 (i10K) backbone director today (see McData's Ready for Rollout and McData Announces Intrepid i10K). And one of its key features, support of 10-Gbit/s Fibre Channel interswitch links (ISLs) begs the question of how, when, and where customers will use the new high-speed links.

The concept of 10-Gbit/s Fibre Channel has been batted around for months now, usually in the same breath with "future plans call for..." So far, though, McData is the first director vendor to actually offer the feature. The question is, does anyone yet care?

Apparently, customers at the high end of the SAN usage spectrum not only want 10-Gbit/s ISLs, they're eager to adopt them in order to consolidate and streamline multiple "SAN islands." Indeed, the whole selling point of a product like the i10K is to create a backbone director, or "director of directors" that can serve as the basis for a centrally manageable tiered network of SANs.

These users are deploying, or planning to deploy, 10-Gbit/s FC links in private optical networks, according to other suppliers. "We have many customers using 10-gig wavelengths to interconnect multiple 1-gig and 2-gig FC links between data centers for business continuity," writes Jack Hunt, a marketing director at Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT) in a recent email.

A similar claim is made by ADVA Optical Networking (Frankfurt: ADV), which also supports 10-Gbit/s Fibre Channel connections. According to Todd Bundy, director of business development and alliances, there is growing demand among enterprise customers to use cheap dark-fiber connections for FC ISLs in big networks. Using 10-Gbit/s FC connectivity provided by ADVA platforms can save millions in capital and operating expenses.McData would also have us think that telecommunications service providers are looking to offer Fibre Channel services to their customers. Indeed, the i10K is billed as having "carrier-class availability." Furthermore, according to McData execs, the company's purchase of Computer Network Technology Corp. (CNT) (Nasdaq: CMNT) today was undertaken specifically to raise McData's profile with carriers (see McData Bags CNT for $235M).

It doesn't look as though carriers are in a hurry to offer 10-Gbit/s services, however, which may indicate the market for 10-Gbit/s ISLs will remain one tied to private wavelength networks. A spokeswoman for AT&T Corp. (NYSE: T) says the company has no intention of adding 10-Gbit/s to its 1- and 2-Gbit/s FC services. Another carrier, WilTelCommunications Group Inc., which also offers Fibre Channel services up to 1 Gbit/s, is looking at 10-Gbit/s, a spokesperson says, but hasn't made a decision to offer it yet.

Still, there is interest in 10-Gbit/s FC on the part of other carriers. A spokeswoman for Pittsburgh-based TelCove says a number of enterprise customers and wholesale service providers have signed on for the carrier's 10-Gbit/s wavelength services, which come with a variety of storage interfaces, including Ficon and Fibre Channel (see TelCove Adds DR Services). "They're interested in storage networking, disaster recovery, and business continuity," she says.

SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC) is planning to introduce a 10-Gbit/s point-to-point service in the first half of 2005, and is evaluating Fibre Channel as an optional point-to-point service add-on. SBC also is looking to add it as a possible add-on to its MON Ring (DWDM) service. No plans are final, though.

It remains to be seen whether the availability of the new backbone director from McData encourages more carriers to offer competition against private 10-Gbit/s FC installations. For now, it looks like the private network users with interest in 10-Gbit/s FC remain at the very high end of the market.Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch