Gigabit Ethernet: Prime time for a new standard

it launched just four months ago. One popular feature that is driving sales is Power over Ethernet (PoE), a technology that has been around since the 1990s but is now coming into its own. In the standard implementation, PoE sends electricity down the two unused pairs in 10/100 Ethernet to power a wide range of devices: security cameras, webcams, hubs and wireless access points.

However, the most common use these days is to power IP phones in VoIP setups. Running the phone system over the Ethernet network already eliminates the need for a separate phone network; with PoE, a business does not have to worry about power points for its handsets either. “It greatly simplifies setting up the infrastructure,” says Godsall.

The next-generation standard, as yet unreleased, will raise the power from 12.5 watts to 56 watts. The higher-powered PoE+ will be able to run videophones, notebooks, thin clients and pan-tilt-zoom video cameras. Already, non-standard implementations by network vendors reach up to 75 watts, enough to power a small PC.

The cost of PoE adds roughly 30 percent to the cost of a $5000 24-port switch. “It’s certainly very popular but is not something you put on every port,” says Fulton.

PoE can also run over GbE, despite the fact that there are no unused pairs. However, there are very few devices that can be powered by PoE that require a GbE connection. The exceptions are certain top-model IP phones that connect to a laptop so a user can send data at Gb speeds.

Until Draft N is confirmed, PoE over GbE is not useful for wireless points; draft N is only in the SOHO market because it cannot support multiple users in a business environment at higher speeds.

Making money

Networking hardware in the lower end has become a commodity with no space for decent margins. The two biggest add-on sales in networking are storage and messaging, especially VoIP. VoIP has already gone mainstream with the enterprise and in the second half of last year was taken up with gusto by SMEs, says Godsall.

Resellers from both sides of the river are converging on these areas. Data resellers are rolling out smaller IP PABXes with batches of IP handsets, while voice resellers are bundling in routing and switching, says Linksys’ Graeme Reardon, regional director A/NZ.

More than 250 resellers turned up for the Linksys training program last year, including many data specialists wanting to know how to move into other spheres. Following the pace of change, Linksys intends to release products with 10 gigabit uplinks later this year.

Cisco has been working hard to turn its data resellers into voice experts. One high-selling product has been the enterprise-focused Call Manager and the SMB version, Call Manager Express. This software turns a Cisco router into a PABX. “It’s a really easy way to move from data to doing voice and data,” says Godsall. Call Manager Express handles up to 240 users, including simultaneous multiple conferencing calls among 96 users. Cisco bundles the software with a router in its 2811 model, which has an RRP of $6500 and manages up to 36 users.
While not an overly large driver of bandwidth consumption, video is finding a home in some verticals, such as education. Private schools are using video-on-demand to play back recorded lessons, either to a main TV or to students’ laptops.

Another technology a long time coming, videoconferencing is finally moving off the movie screens and into corner offices. Once it required special rooms with expensive, custom set-ups, but now videoconferencing to desktop is slowly gaining ground and forcing businesses to upgrade the backbone to eliminate bottlenecks. “It’s tough to get that through the WAN but first you have to get through the LAN,” says Godsall. Cisco’s unified communications messaging system automatically connects calls by clicking on address book entries; the phone call can then be bumped up to video with a second click.

While videoconferencing is still in its protracted infancy, few seem to doubt that SMEs will one day make video calls as a matter of habit.

The next step up from videoconferencing could single-handedly force many SMEs to upgrade to 10GbE – once the technology gets a little cheaper. Telepresence delivers a life-size image of a co-worker on an ultra-high definition screen with spatial audio. Cisco’s cheapest system costs around half a million dollars and requires a throughput of 2-4Mb/s per screen.

There is plenty of puff left in the race of innovation to counter bandwidth consumption. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) began reviewing submissions in November 2006 for 100GbE running over optical fibre.

Plenty to store

IP has long been heralded as the cheap and easy way to solve storage problems for SMEs. Storage vendors have been talking about iSCSI technology for three years, but there has been little to show for it.

“At last there is some rubber meeting the road,” says Mark Ransom, storage alliance manager, LAN Systems. Ransom says data resellers are finding easy value-adds to networking sales with entry-level disk arrays.

Network attached storage (NAS) has been around on IP networks for some time, but now storage area networks (SANs) are also making