June 21, 2005
EtherFabric Pushes Networking Stakes
By Sean Michael Kerner
The world of high-speed networking welcomed a new entrant this week in the
form of an Ethernet-based technology called EtherFabric. The technology offers
the promise of fast server interconnect speeds coupled with reduced CPU
overhead.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Level 5 Networks claims that its EtherFabric
technology will help reduce the cost of high-speed interconnect while
improving performance. In terms of network-connection speed, Level 5 claims
that EtherFabric offers twice the bandwidth of a conventional 1GB Ethernet
(GbE) connection. They also claim that it provides sub-10 micro-second
connection latency between different servers application instances.
According to Level 5, EtherFabric enables more than twice the CPU
processing power of a conventional Ethernet connection due to lower
processing overhead to transfer data over the network. Prices for a two-port
EtherFabric Network interface card and associated software range between
$295 and $495 based on volume.
Level 5 is positioning EtherFabric against other high-speed interconnect
technologies like iWarp and InfiniBand, which Level 5 claims data center
managers have declined to adopt due to higher implementation costs. The
higher costs are due to infrastructure changes that InfiniBand and iWarp
require since they don't use existing Ethernet infrastructures.
InfiniBand is a switched-fabric interconnect technology for
high-performance network devices that is common in a number of supercomputer
clusters.
Since 1993 InfiniBand has boasted a massive 30GB of bandwidth for its interconnect technology. Support for InfiniBand
also recently got a boost thanks to its inclusion in the Linux kernel.
Yet despite InfiniBand advantages, at least one analyst agrees that
EtherFiber may pose some degree of threat to Infiniband for certain
environments due to the fact that EtherFiber leverages Ethernet
infrastructure.
"From
the perspective of mid-sized enterprises, any high-speed Networking
solution that doesn't require replacing Ethernet networking
infrastructure, or to learn new protocols, is going to get attention,"
John Sloan, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, told
internetnews.com.
"This is why Ethernet/iSCSI SANs are gaining traction with
SMEs. Why adopt Fibre Channel infrastructure and go to Fibre Channel school
if you can leverage existing Ethernet infrastructure and networking
knowledge?"
Whether EtherFabric as technology makes a dent in the market, however,
depends on the cost of the EtherFabric cards versus their impact on mission-
critical computing and infrastructure consolidation, according to Sloan.
"This
technology is clearly targeted at high-performance computer clusters
and specific processor-intensive vertical applications," Sloan said.
"Cost-conscious, mid-sized enterprises are always sensitive to the
relative costs
of good enough versus top performance."
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