Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

SANs See Sonet: Page 2 of 4

Engineer won't say whether Cisco is currently developing Sonet capabilities for its Fibre Channel switches and directors from Andiamo Systems Inc. But he does say the optical networking group has been working with Andiamo over the past year. "Customers need to take a look at their network evolution and realize that storage networking will be an integrated part of their solution."

The two powerhouse players will enter a space carved out by Akara Corp., which started selling FC-over-Sonet equipment two years ago, and startup LightSand Communications Corp. Lucent Technologies Inc.'s (NYSE: LU) OptiStar EdgeSwitch and Alcatel SA's (NYSE: ALA; Paris: CGEP:PA) 1696 Metro Span system also support FC over Sonet (see EMC OKs Lucent for SRDF, Akara Goes Wide , and LightSand Buffs Up Optical SANs).

Until recently, the primary way SANs have been extended synchronously at high speeds over metro areas has been via WDM. But while WDM provides very low latency and high bandwidth -- up to 10 Gbit/s per wavelength -- obtaining the dark fiber to run it is often difficult or impossible. Besides that, WDM is pretty much out of the price range of small and midsized businesses.

Sonet, by contrast, is ubiquitous, with an estimated 135,000 Sonet rings deployed in North America. "The ultimate driver for storage over Sonet is midrange enterprises implementing disaster-recovery solutions," says Steve Adolph, Akara's VP of product marketing. "Enterprises rule out WDM because they can't get dark fiber, or because it's too expensive."

Nortel's Hunt agrees: "We found that synchronous mirroring using DWDM is probably limited to the Fortune 500 companies that can afford their own private network."