Internet Network Security Blog

Interop New York 2011 is upon us. Starting October 3rd and running through October 7th, UBM's Interop show sill be taking place at the Javits Center. It going to be a full week starting with pre-conference days on virtualization, cloud computing, and CIO boot camp. Wednesday through Friday, the conference kicks off with three full days of in depth sessions and panels covering virtually every aspect of IT. The expo hall will be open Wednesday and Thursday so you can meet with vendors and see the latest gear. We have compiled previews for the most of the conference tracks to highlight some must see sessions if you are strapped for time.

Cloud Computing Preview

Telepresence in your future

Enterprise 2.0 Preview

Wireless & Mobility Preview

Data Center & Storage Preview

Security and Risk Management Preview

Networking Preview

Virtualization Preview

The path to converged networking has to date been driven mostly from the networking side of the street. While we can argue whether Fiber Channel over Ethernet is more Fibre Channel or Ethernet, there's no argument that Cisco's been its biggest cheerleader. Qlogic's new Fabric Freedom product line provides a more storage centric and incremental path to converged networking by supplying ports that can switch between 16Gbps Fibre Channel or 10Gbps Ethernet, with or without FCoE, as your data center evolves.

While I'm a firm believer that Ethernet always wins, the path to converged networking has required a significant upfront investment in FCoE capable switching to be the first step. Your shiny new nth generation CNA isn't going to do you any good if you don't have a 10Gbs switch to plug it into. If you need to buy a dozen, or a thousand, new servers before you settle on a new datacenter switching architecture, you’ll have to equip them with quad 1Gbps Ethernet cards and FC HBAs.

Qlogic's dual port FlexSuite adapter can be configured to be either a 16Gbps Fibre Channel HBA or a 10Gbps Ethernet CNA complete with up to four virtual NICs per port with bandwidth management, SR-IOV and protocol offloads including TCP, iSCSI and FCoE.

When you install the server into your FC network and configure it to be an HBA, it will look and smell like the Qlogic HBAs the majority of Fibre Channel attached servers in the world already run. You can plug it into your 4, 8 or 16Gbps Fibre Channel network and be up and running tout de suite.

When you get around to installing 10Gbps switches, you can swap out the Fibre Channel optics for 10Gbps Ethernet optics or DAC (Direct Attach Copper) cables, flash in the Ethernet personality firmware and plug it in to run converged networking. I can even see some companies installing a pair of FlexSuite cards for non-converged data and storage traffic using the same hardware.

Qlogic promises SFP+ and 10Gbase-T versions, though I can't see Fibre Channel over twisted pair getting any traction. While you can switch the card's personality from FC to Ethernet or vice versa, both ports have to run the same protocol at the same time.

Qlogic also announced a companion switch that can switch ports back and forth between 10Gbps Ethernet with DCB and 16Gbps Fibre Channel. The UA5900 (The UA stands for Universal Access) has 52 SFP+ flex ports plus 4 QSFP ports that can run 40Gbps Ethernet or 64Gbps Fiber Channel. Like many Fibre Channel switches, you buy it with some ports enabled and buy licenses to turn up additional ports in 4 or 12 port increments.

Most vendors enable Ethernet on their base switches and charge a significant sum for the storage protocol support to run FCoE. Qlogic thinks of this as a Fibre Channel switch that does Ethernet more than as an Ethernet switch and a Fibre Channel switch in the same box that speak FCoE to each other as most first generation FCoE switches were. They do charge for a converged networking license to let FCoE servers communicate with FC attached storage, but the base switch will support native FCoE storage access without a special license.

It looks to me like Qlogic’s done a good job defending their position as the HBA leader and is delivering a new approach to FCoE that can be implemented more incrementally than Cisco or Brocade's model. On the other hand, the UA5900 doesn’t have any TRILL like Ethernet fabric support or virtual server security management and I’m betting the future of data center networking is in that direction.

It may take a couple of years before an organization will have to make the switch to IPv6, but there is no question that the switch will be made and the majority of IT professionals aren't prepared. According to a recent survey, 80% of about 2,400 respondents feel they are not educated enough on the subject to perform an IPv6 migration, half don’t know which of their network elements support IPv6 today, and 70% are concerned about whether they can successfully implement an IPv6 deployment.

That's where CloudFlare hopes to make a difference. The San Francisco-based Web performance and security vendor has announced Automatic IPv6, a free cloud-based IPv6-to-IPv4 translation service. "Everybody knows it's a problem; what if we made it really easy? We realized six months ago we could solve the problem of transition from IPv4 to Ipv6," says CEO Matthew Prince.

The transition to IPv6 is necessary because the number of IPv4 addresses is running out. To increase Internet Protocol address space, IPv6 addresses will be 128-bit addresses, versus IPv4’s 32-bit, creating a virtually infinite number of IP addresses. In addition to its primary role of increasing the supply of IP addresses, a test of a dozen IPv6 Web applications saw increases in performance from 2% to 200%, averaging 80%.

Prince says more than 100,000 Web sites already use CloudFlare, but that only about 1% of the total existing Web sites are available in IPv6. Powered by proxies at the company's 14 data centers, the service translates IPv6 traffic to IPv4 before being sent to a Website; the service also offers IPv4-to-IPv6 translation, he says. "We've been testing for the last month and I think we have over 10,000 sites using it."

In a year the company has gone from zero traffic to 350 million unique visitors every month and 15 billion page views in the last 30 days, says Prince. The typical Website using CloudFlare's free service loads twice as fast, uses 60% less bandwidth, has 65% fewer requests and is significantly more secure, says the company. The company also offers a paid service, CloudFlare Pro, and intends to launch an enterprise version.

"What you ultimately want to do is make the Web fast and safe," he says. "We started with performance and speed, and now IPv6."

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports IPv6 Security: Problem Child Or Opportunity to Improve? (subscription required).

Networking and ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) developer QLogic is building out its Adaptive Convergence strategy with new adapters, switches and routers that power 16Gb Fibre Channel or 10Gb data center Ethernet networks from the same hardware. The company's portfolio offers 'any-to-any' connectivity by building in TCP/IP, iSCSI, FCoE and native Fibre Channel. The announcements included FlexSuite adapters, Universal Access Point switches and intelligent Storage Routers (iSR).

An end-to-end fabric solution (Fabric Freedom) that provides access to anything through any port reduces hardware requirements and lowers costs, says the company. They say they are providing dual-personality adapters that can run any protocol without having to uplift any infrastructure.

QLogic first launched their Adaptive Convergence strategy a year ago in what was called 'the equivalent of a nuclear blast across the converged networking landscape, metaphorically leveling the competition in its wake.' With it, the company aims to deliver flexible network resources across the enterprise and help its OEMs create autonomic, adaptable and flexible IT environments.

The new FlexSuite controller can power both native 16Gb Fibre Channel and 10Gb CEE converged networks. Qlogic says the FlexSuite PCIe generation 3.0-compliant adapters, powered by the new controller, will be available in a wide variety of form factors and are currently being sampled by Tier-1 server and storage OEMs.

The multi-protocol Universal Access Point switch, UA5900, provides Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Top of Rack (TOR) switch features. Entry-level configurations start with as few as 24 small form factor pluggable (SFP) device ports and can grow to 68 device ports per U, via 'pay-as-you-grow' port licenses. Four optional quad small form factor pluggable (QSFP) ports can be initially used as 64Gb Fibre Channel trunking ports.

With the company's flex port capabilities, customers can toggle between 16Gb Fibre Channel and 10GbE on any of the 68 SFP ports, enabling deployment of converged network adapters (CNAs) within a traditional Fibre Channel fabric. The Converged Networking (CVN) license option provides switch-wide access to advanced features including datacenter bridging, Fibre Channel forwarding and 40Gb Ethernet transit ports, allowing the UA5900 to be deployed as an edge or TOR solution in any Ethernet topology.

The iSR intelligent Storage Router provides SAN-over-WAN connectivity for business continuity and disaster recovery, as well as a flexible data migration solution for enterprise-class data centers. General availability of all of the products is expected in the first half of 2012.

The most significant thing about the announcement is that it is another proof point of the blurring of the line between FC and Ethernet, says Stuart Miniman, senior analyst, Wikibon. "On the adapter side, the two primary FC HBA suppliers (Emulex and QLogic) are providing products that can be deployed today as FC and if a customer wants to switch to more Ethernet, they can. Many customers are hesitant to embrace FCoE, but there is consensus that moving to a converged environment is the long term goal. Buying a solution that can do FC or any of the Ethernet options (FC, iSCSI, NAS) give customers the options of convergence with the flexibility of not being locked into a single option."

Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), believes the 16Gb announcement is pretty significant, with VM densities rapidly increasing. ESG research surveys indicate that 31 percent of respondents anticipate having 25 or more VMs per physical server in the next year. "So the additional throughput will be welcomed."

He also thinks the top of rack switch is pretty cool too. "Great price-to-performance, with a lot of room to scale and offers any port to be configured any way, which is important for future proofing. Plus, QLogic claims it will plug into B or C fabrics so they are positioning it to be a very attractive TOR switch."

Overall, Laliberte thinks it's still early in the 16Gb FC race, and he would be surprised if 8 Gb FC has reached 60 percent penetration yet. "But this helps to drive SAN designs and clearly QLogic is hoping to make a dent in Brocade’s and Cisco’s switch business as well as improve upon their HBA and 3G CNA footprint."

He says FC will be around for the foreseeable future so they expect to see adoption of 16Gb FC in the market. "The flexibility Qlogic provides in the adapter and switch will enable organizations to buy FC today and then transform the infrastructure to Ethernet-based technology when and where they need to. One of the keys to QLogic's success will of course be how well their OEM partners embrace and sell their solutions."

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports Research: Data Center Convergence (subscription required).

There are some technologies that you just don't monkey with. Running water, for example. The nation's food supply. And the Global Positioning System (GPS) that is the space-based, hyper-accurate enabler to about a zillion different location applications found in many aspects of modern civilized life. But courtesy of newcomer 4G wannabe LightSquared, a somewhat exotic mobile network technology threatens to lay functional waste to millions of consumer, commercial, and military GPS-enabled devices. This is one weird tale that just can’t get too much press.

In a story line that loosely parallels the recent Broadband Over Powerline (BPL) debacle, the LightSquared story also shows the ugly sausage that can be created when politicians try to advance technologies they don’t understand. In the BPL case, then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell played head cheerleader for the controversial power-line based network technology that has since largely fizzled out due to its own shortcomings. With LightSquared, at least the FCC is showing some restraint of late, but only after getting a shellacking for fast-tracking conditional approval for the potential GPS-killer earlier in the year and deeming it a “promising technology” despite a growing number of technically-minded groups lining up against it. (A reminder that the FCC is made up of political appointees is in order right about now.)

For those not following the story, LightSquared wants to do 4G mobile networking in a new way, using frequencies that have been so far left alone for the revered GPS satellite constellation to do its magic. The GPS system uses signals from space, measured in values as small as microvolts on the ground, for both consumer and precision commercial and military devices. From some four thousand land-based towers, LightSquared would operate in the same frequencies, but at power levels that have been described as being potentially millions of times stronger than GPS signals. This is why a lot of commercial spectators to the process are very, very worried.

It’s probably little wonder that this whole mess is painted with a thick coat of politics. The primary investor in LightSquared donated heavily to the Democratic Party. President Obama wants growth in the national broadband area and has indicated his willingness to encourage new technologies. The republican party has cried foul over the democratic-slanted FCC hustling through the conditional approval that has allowed the company to come this far along. And wouldn’t you know it- every side in the debate has a technical expert ready to testify about how great and how terrible LightSquared’s technology is. Ugh.

Speaking of politics and testimony, General William Shelton is Commander, Air Force Space Command, and in my book a courageous fellow. Despite risk to his career (politics, remember?), Shelton recently testified before a congressional armed services committee on the military’s reliance on the GPS system, and pulled no punches that LightSquared’s proposed system would lay waste to pretty much all GPS-based military receivers based on systematic testing done by and for the military.

LightSquared counters that millions of GPS devices made to date, and even the GPS satellites themselves, are not designed as they should be, and imply that perhaps this really isn’t the company’s problem. There have been press releases about the now infamous “ten-cent filter” that LightSquared claims can be retrofitted into most commercial and military devices to mitigate interference from LightSquared’s signals (sorry consumers, your existing GPS stuff pretty much gets and stays unusable). To date, the filter has yet to be produced for the many parties that are asking to see and evaluate it.

I will admit a bias of sorts against what LightSquared is trying to do. We all have our own frames of reference, and mine on this topic is formed from a technology-based military career, being an avid user of consumer GPS products, and believing that good ideas shouldn’t need federal-level political cheerleaders to make them viable. At the same time, I live in the real world, and understand that huge dollars are tangled up in both sides of this story. I don’t yet know how it will turn out, but for now it is making for some exciting techno-drama.

In a surprise development, HP has named former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to replace Leo Apotheker as president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, based on disappointment in his failure to execute on the company's new strategy. Whitman, who also ran for governor of California last year but lost, pledged support for HP's strategy of building its enterprise software business and making a decision by the end of the year on whether to spin off its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which sells desktop, laptop and tablet computers to consumers.

"HP really matters. It matters to Silicon Valley, to California, to the United States and frankly the entire world," Whitman said in a conference call with financial analysts and reporters. "HP will have no higher priority than to do everything in our power to meet the challenge of today's macro-economic environment and improve our operational and financial performance."

Ray Lane will assume the position of executive chairman of HP's board and explained on the conference call why Apotheker was replaced as president and CEO. Lane said that a company the size of HP -- $128 billion in revenue and 320,000 employees -- requires an executive team that are all on the same page and that wasn't happening under Apotheker, who previously was CEO of enterprise software company SAP.

Secondly, Apotheker's execution of company strategy was poor, Lane said: "[Apotheker lacked] the ability to get deep down into the businesses and understand the dynamics that were going on and can land us on a quarter ahead of expectations."

Thirdly, communications broke down under Apotheker's tenure, Lane added, particularly surrounding an announcement HP made on Aug. 18 to study spinning off PSG, discontinue the failed HP TouchPad tablet computer and two smartphones after only a few months on the market, and acquire the enterprise information management software company Autonomy for $10 billion. "I look at Meg and her strongest attributes are leadership, team play, communications and operating execution," said Lane.

Whitman served as CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2007 and during her tenure built the company into an $8 billion Web auction site, one of the early successes of the e-commerce era. Although she stepped down as CEO in 2007, she stayed on the board for another year.

Whitman ran for governor of California as a Republican but lost to Democrat Jerry Brown in 2010. Coincidentally, one of her chief rivals for the Republican nomination was Carly Fiorina, who served as HP CEO from 1999 until she was forced out in 2005.

Fiorina was replaced by Mark Hurd, who was also forced to resign in 2010, in his case for questionable expense reports for dinners with a woman who was a marketing contractor for HP. Whitman has also been on HP's board since January of this year. Lane said the company will appoint a lead independent director to its board "promptly;" Apotheker also lost his board seat.

With Whitman in charge, executive chairman Lane has someone who can execute on HP's strategy in a way Apotheker couldn't, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, a tech research firm. "Ray Lane had to bail him out," Enderle said, of Apotheker. "Lane was basically the acting head of HP and Apotheker was his executive vice president."

Now, Lane can give broad direction to Whitman about the company's strategy and she will execute it, Enderle said. And as a onetime politician, Whitman will be good at staying on message as a high-profile CEO.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports The Data Mastery Imperative (subscription required).

In a surprise development, HP has named former eBay CEO Meg Whitman to replace Leo Apotheker as president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, based on disappointment in his failure to execute on the company's new strategy. Whitman, who also ran for governor of California last year but lost, pledged support for HP's strategy of building its enterprise software business and making a decision by the end of the year on whether to spin off its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which sells desktop, laptop and tablet computers to consumers.

"HP really matters. It matters to Silicon Valley, to California, to the United States and frankly the entire world," Whitman said in a conference call with financial analysts and reporters. "HP will have no higher priority than to do everything in our power to meet the challenge of today's macro-economic environment and improve our operational and financial performance."

Ray Lane will assume the position of executive chairman of HP's board and explained on the conference call why Apotheker was replaced as president and CEO. Lane said that a company the size of HP -- $128 billion in revenue and 320,000 employees -- requires an executive team that are all on the same page and that wasn't happening under Apotheker, who previously was CEO of enterprise software company SAP.

Secondly, Apotheker's execution of company strategy was poor, Lane said: "[Apotheker lacked] the ability to get deep down into the businesses and understand the dynamics that were going on and can land us on a quarter ahead of expectations."

Thirdly, communications broke down under Apotheker's tenure, Lane added, particularly surrounding an announcement HP made on Aug. 18 to study spinning off PSG, discontinue the failed HP TouchPad tablet computer and two smartphones after only a few months on the market, and acquire the enterprise information management software company Autonomy for $10 billion. "I look at Meg and her strongest attributes are leadership, team play, communications and operating execution," said Lane.

Whitman served as CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2007 and during her tenure built the company into an $8 billion Web auction site, one of the early successes of the e-commerce era. Although she stepped down as CEO in 2007, she stayed on the board for another year.

Whitman ran for governor of California as a Republican but lost to Democrat Jerry Brown in 2010. Coincidentally, one of her chief rivals for the Republican nomination was Carly Fiorina, who served as HP CEO from 1999 until she was forced out in 2005.

Fiorina was replaced by Mark Hurd, who was also forced to resign in 2010, in his case for questionable expense reports for dinners with a woman who was a marketing contractor for HP. Whitman has also been on HP's board since January of this year. Lane said the company will appoint a lead independent director to its board "promptly;" Apotheker also lost his board seat.

With Whitman in charge, executive chairman Lane has someone who can execute on HP's strategy in a way Apotheker couldn't, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, a tech research firm. "Ray Lane had to bail him out," Enderle said, of Apotheker. "Lane was basically the acting head of HP and Apotheker was his executive vice president."

Now, Lane can give broad direction to Whitman about the company's strategy and she will execute it, Enderle said. And as a onetime politician, Whitman will be good at staying on message as a high-profile CEO.

See more on this topic by subscribing to Network Computing Pro Reports The Data Mastery Imperative (subscription required).

I have been watching (and occasionally poking my $.02 in) a few interesting discussions on Twitter lately about the proprietary scope of various vendor network fabrics, like Broacade's Virtual Cluster Switch, Cisco's FabricPath, HP's Intelligent Redundant Framework, or Juniper's QFabric. I am interested in the topic because of the level of commitment an enterprise has to make when choosing and deploying one of the fabrics. It's a big commitment--rip and replace is really an expensive option once you choose one vendor over another--and all of these fabrics involve ripping and replacing your existing gear. In nearly all cases, the replacement of data center networking is proprietary. Yet when we ask IT about proprietary vs standards based purchases, the majority of responses indicate that standards are nearly always preferred. So why are the network fabrics proprietary? There is a disconnect between what we are hearing from IT and what vendors are offering, and it seems to me that vendors are collectively shooting themselves in their feet.

Year over year, our research shows a roughly 50-50 split between IT people who want single vendor suites and those who want multi-vendor, aka best of breed. This is consistent across verticals, company size, and revenue, and location. In our most recent survey of 444 business technology professionals involved with LAN equipment, we asked a different question, trying to get a better handle on respondents preference for standards or proprietary products and when they might use either (this is from a larger data set I am analyzing). The data shows that most respondents, 67 percent, think proprietary products are to be avoided if possible and a large minority, 32 percent think that some proprietary products are acceptable. Only 1 percent think proprietary products and features have better integration and interoperation features than standards based products. 1 percent.

In our 2010 IT Pro: Data Center Networking Vendor Evaluation Survey[subscription required], (we are updating that survey even as I write) multi-path Ethernet, which underpins Ethernet fabrics, was ranked 13 out 15 must have features. In that same survey, "Proprietary features in advance of standards" was 15 out of 15. That's bottom of the heap, just to be clear.

There is a disconnect between what our surveys show IT wants (standards based products) and what vendors are delivering (proprietary products). What to choose is a big decision because we are talking about an investment of time, money, and expertise to roll out an Ethernet fabric. What you buy today will set the direction of your network for the next several years--most likely several product cycles, at the very least. Companies, at least none that I have talked to, don't re-evaluate vendors and switch every 3-5 years unless there is a very compelling reason, like betting on the wrong technology, such as Token Ring or ATM. Companies tend to re-invest within a single vendor or product family. The total investment spans a long period due to factors such as inertia, the cost to switch, avoiding disruption, or pressing dependencies on the status quo by other critical systems.

Standards based products makes swapping easier because you can take another product that supports the standards, configure it and, in theory, swap it with nary a hiccup. I know, it's not that easy, but far, far easier than swapping proprietary stuff. You can swap a Cisco router with a Juniper router and it all just works because the entire stack is based on standards. But just because IT can swap gear doesn't mean that they actually do swap gear. At least, they don't swap gear on a whim but there is a strong practical and psychological comfort knowing that they could and that they aren't getting locked in to a proprietary product. When I ask vendor spokespeople why they are creating proprietary products when there is clearly standards work going on, the usual reason I hear is customer demand. "Customers want , now," the vendors say, and usually follow up (off the record) stating they'd love to have standards but the standards bodies are slow to deliver standards documents and our customers can't wait. See, it's the customers fault that vendors make proprietary products. Ok, that last bit was just me being ridiculous.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), arguably the primary driver behind multi-path Ethernet may or may not be dead, although Doug Gourlay, VP of Marketing at Arista, a former Cisco employee, and generally smart guy, thinks it is but we don't know it yet. I think FCoE is either going to be on a slow adoption curve like VoIP was or, like VDI, there will be a few deployments and lots of tire kicking that turn to naught.

However, what I do see is this: Most enterprises, large and small, are not going to jump into a big investment in what they perceive to be proprietary products. It's one of the reasons that hurt VoIP adoption--the requirement to purchase within a single product line or partnership program lest IT take in the responsibility of making handsets work with PBX's (Don't give me the SIP is standard line. Try to get phones and handsets to work reliably outside of hardware compatibility lists). It's the reason why 802.11 Wi-Fi adoption was slow in both consumer and enterprise IT until the Wi-Fi Alliance formed and hammered out an interoperability testing and logo program ensuring that any NIC and AP would work together reliably. I don't think I am being hyperbolic in saying if it weren't for the Wi-Fi Alliance, 802.11 Wi-Fi products would be crippled today.

Enterprise IT wants to know that their products are going to work with the rest of their IT systems and unless there is a really compelling reason to adopt proprietary products, they probably won't. It's not that Brocade, Cisco, HP, or Juniper are likely to close up and leave customers hanging. It's that once enterprise IT commits to a product path, they are committing for years and creating dependencies on the network. The don't want to be hobbled by proprietary products. Fair or not, IT has a long memory and no one wants to let a vendor dictate their IT direction.

I think the stall in adopting multi-path Ethernet has as much to do with IT hesitancy to commit to proprietary products as much as other factors like price, learning curve, etc. I think if the vendors, all of them, not just the ones I mentioned, would sit down, work out the standards, move them along through the standards bodies, and commit to interoperable products, the whole market would grow, which is good for everyone, vendors and customers alike.

I have been watching (and occasionally poking my $.02 in) a few interesting discussions on Twitter lately about the proprietary scope of various vendor network fabrics, like Brocade's Virtual Cluster Switch, Cisco's FabricPath, HP's Intelligent Resilient Framework, or Juniper's QFabric. I am interested in the topic because of the level of commitment an enterprise has to make when choosing and deploying one of the fabrics. It's a big commitment--rip and replace is really an expensive option once you choose one vendor over another--and all of these fabrics involve ripping and replacing your existing gear. In nearly all cases, the replacement of data center networking is proprietary. Yet when we ask IT about proprietary vs standards based purchases, the majority of responses indicate that standards are nearly always preferred. So why are the network fabrics proprietary? There is a disconnect between what we are hearing from IT and what vendors are offering, and it seems to me that vendors are collectively shooting themselves in their feet.

Year over year, our research shows a roughly 50-50 split between IT people who want single vendor suites and those who want multi-vendor, aka best of breed. This is consistent across verticals, company size, and revenue, and location. In our most recent survey of 444 business technology professionals involved with LAN equipment, we asked a different question, trying to get a better handle on respondents preference for standards or proprietary products and when they might use either (this is from a larger data set I am analyzing). The data shows that most respondents, 67 percent, think proprietary products are to be avoided if possible and a large minority, 32 percent think that some proprietary products are acceptable. Only 1 percent think proprietary products and features have better integration and interoperation features than standards based products. 1 percent.

In our 2010 IT Pro: Data Center Networking Vendor Evaluation Survey[subscription required], (we are updating that survey even as I write) multi-path Ethernet, which underpins Ethernet fabrics, was ranked 13 out 15 must have features. In that same survey, "Proprietary features in advance of standards" was 15 out of 15. That's bottom of the heap, just to be clear.

There is a disconnect between what our surveys show IT wants (standards based products) and what vendors are delivering (proprietary products). What to choose is a big decision because we are talking about an investment of time, money, and expertise to roll out an Ethernet fabric. What you buy today will set the direction of your network for the next several years--most likely several product cycles, at the very least. Companies, at least none that I have talked to, don't re-evaluate vendors and switch every 3-5 years unless there is a very compelling reason, like betting on the wrong technology, such as Token Ring or ATM. Companies tend to re-invest within a single vendor or product family. The total investment spans a long period due to factors such as inertia, the cost to switch, avoiding disruption, or pressing dependencies on the status quo by other critical systems.

Standards based products makes swapping easier because you can take another product that supports the standards, configure it and, in theory, swap it with nary a hiccup. I know, it's not that easy, but far, far easier than swapping proprietary stuff. You can swap a Cisco router with a Juniper router and it all just works because the entire stack is based on standards. But just because IT can swap gear doesn't mean that they actually do swap gear. At least, they don't swap gear on a whim but there is a strong practical and psychological comfort knowing that they could and that they aren't getting locked in to a proprietary product. When I ask vendor spokespeople why they are creating proprietary products when there is clearly standards work going on, the usual reason I hear is customer demand. "Customers want , now," the vendors say, and usually follow up (off the record) stating they'd love to have standards but the standards bodies are slow to deliver standards documents and our customers can't wait. See, it's the customers fault that vendors make proprietary products. Ok, that last bit was just me being ridiculous.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), arguably the primary driver behind multi-path Ethernet may or may not be dead, although Doug Gourlay, VP of Marketing at Arista, a former Cisco employee, and generally smart guy, thinks it is but we don't know it yet. I think FCoE is either going to be on a slow adoption curve like VoIP was or, like VDI, there will be a few deployments and lots of tire kicking that turn to naught.

However, what I do see is this: Most enterprises, large and small, are not going to jump into a big investment in what they perceive to be proprietary products. It's one of the reasons that hurt VoIP adoption--the requirement to purchase within a single product line or partnership program lest IT take in the responsibility of making handsets work with PBX's (Don't give me the SIP is standard line. Try to get phones and handsets to work reliably outside of hardware compatibility lists). It's the reason why 802.11 Wi-Fi adoption was slow in both consumer and enterprise IT until the Wi-Fi Alliance formed and hammered out an interoperability testing and logo program ensuring that any NIC and AP would work together reliably. I don't think I am being hyperbolic in saying if it weren't for the Wi-Fi Alliance, 802.11 Wi-Fi products would be crippled today.

Enterprise IT wants to know that their products are going to work with the rest of their IT systems and unless there is a really compelling reason to adopt proprietary products, they probably won't. It's not that Brocade, Cisco, HP, or Juniper are likely to close up and leave customers hanging. It's that once enterprise IT commits to a product path, they are committing for years and creating dependencies on the network. The don't want to be hobbled by proprietary products. Fair or not, IT has a long memory and no one wants to let a vendor dictate their IT direction.

I think the stall in adopting multi-path Ethernet has as much to do with IT hesitancy to commit to proprietary products as much as other factors like price, learning curve, etc. I think if the vendors, all of them, not just the ones I mentioned, would sit down, work out the standards, move them along through the standards bodies, and commit to interoperable products, the whole market would grow, which is good for everyone, vendors and customers alike.

If you’re just getting used to the notion of 10-gigabit Ethernet, you might be surprised to learn that Anue Systems Inc. is releasing what it says is the first network monitoring switch that is intended to help manage networks of up to 40G. Network monitoring switches perform tasks such as filtering out only a particular type of network traffic and then routing it to a network monitoring tool specifically intended to manage that traffic, but which might not have the capacity to handle and filter that volume of traffic itself. Such switches can typically handle multiple filtering and routing tasks simultaneously.

Due to issues such as data racks that are so full it’s hard to find a place to locate probes, and underpowered monitoring tools that are not capable of reliably monitoring even 10GbE traffic, IT administrators are increasingly turning to monitoring switches such as those produced by Anue, says Andre Kindness, a senior analyst for Forrester Research Inc. “Network engineers can plug any or all of their network monitoring and management tools directly into a matrix switch and have them all sit on a rack together,” he says. “The switch can share all the flow-based information with other tools, which eliminates the span port and network tap shortage. This can help standardize operations and keep various teams from willy-nilly adding taps, probes, or span ports, which can be a management nightmare and security risk.” The new Anue products also help enterprises position themselves to support forthcoming 40G networks in the future, he adds.

“40G is not yet mainstream, but it is becoming increasingly common as the normal cycles of data center refresh occur and new datacenters are planned and built,” agrees Jim Frey, managing research director for Enterprise Management Associates Inc. “Whenever network technologies take a step up in bandwidth, it creates significant disruption on the monitoring and management tools side, both for network and security management objectives. We saw a similar wave of disruption when 10Gb Ethernet arrived several years back. Essentially, management and monitoring tools that are designed to handle lower and more commonplace data rates, such as 1G, don't support either the media interfaces for higher data rates nor can they handle the total volume of data that might be pushed at them.”

The Anue 5288 Net Tool Optimizer provides up to 32 10G ports per rack unit, as well as supporting up to 16 40G and continuing to support up to 32 1G, which gives network administrators a growth path to 40G while still supporting existing 1G and 10G networks – as well as protecting users’ investments in their management tools, says Rudy Millian, product manager for the Austin, Texas, company. The product also features a small footprint with lower energy requirements and continues to use the same drag-and-drop interfaces that the company’s previous 5200 series of products have been using, he says.

Pricing for the devices, which are available now, start at $70,000 and range up to $225,000 for a fully configured 64-port model.

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