Start-Up Set to Unveil Method
For Improving Network Flows

A Silicon Valley start-up is announcing an inexpensive way to fix a communications bottleneck that afflicts corporate data centers: by wringing more speed from a venerable technology called Ethernet.

The company, Level 5 Networks, is addressing a problem that occurs because servers typically aren't able to exploit the potential capacity of the networks that connect machines together. One reason is that computers get bogged down in managing communications and computing at the same time, as calculating jobs are interrupted by requests to send and receive packets of data.

Many companies have been working on solutions, which typically involve replacing the networking scheme called Ethernet, a mainstay of computer users since the 1980s. These replacement approaches, including a technology called InfiniBand that has been backed by Intel Corp. and others, tend to be expensive. They also usually require modifying server software through a process called recompilation, another potential headache for users.

Level 5, which has headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., developed software and an add-in circuit board that takes over the job of managing communications from the server, without the need to recompile operating systems or applications software. The company, which also has an engineering group in Cambridge, England, says the technology, called EtherFabric, can more fully exploit Ethernet connections that now typically send up to one billion bits of data per second.

"You can do the same work with half the servers," said Dan Karr, Level 5's chief executive officer.

Phil Williams, an advanced-research fellow at Britain's University of Nottingham, has been testing Level 5's technology for complex molecular-dynamics calculations. Mr. Williams said using the technology has allowed a group of machines to finish some computing chores in one-fifth to one-eighth of the time previously required, speed that in the past would have required expensive networking gear.

Level 5 plans to charge $295 to $495 for its boards, which provide two Ethernet connections with speeds of one gigabit, or one billion bits of information, per second each. It estimates that price is less than half the cost of more radical networking set-ups. Level 5's first products work with the Linux operating system, though the company plans also to support Unix and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. Besides selling the products itself, it hopes to convince computer makers to offer its products along with their devices.

The products are being evaluated, among other places, by a team of researchers in International Business Machines Corp.'s Deep Computing group, which helps develop supercomputers used for scientific applications. "I'm very optimistic" about the technology, said Earl Dodd, a Deep Computing strategist.

There won't be any shortage of competition. Another Silicon Valley start-up, Precision I/O, is testing software for accelerating networking performance in much the same way as Level 5 and plans to enter the market this year. "We are both singing the same song," said Dan O'Farrell, the company's vice president of marketing.

David Passmore, an analyst at the Burton Group, a market-research firm in Midvale, Utah, says the new approach is the latest in a series of technologies that have extended Ethernet's life and thwarted attempts to replace it. "I have an old saying," he says. "Never bet against Ethernet."

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

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