News Blog

A correction was made to this story. Read below for details.

Foot traffic seems slow at this year's Interop business tech conference. I've heard about companies issuing travel bans on employees and vendors pulling out at the last minute due to budget constraints. However, the people who run Interop say attendance is up from last year.

Nevertheless, the networking industry is making the best out of it. Some of the early highlights for me include:

1. Switching, switching, and more switching
Extreme Networks kicked off the proceedings on Monday in Las Vegas with a new 10-Gigabit stackable data center switch built to scale to 40/100 Gig in the future. This nice device set the tone for Interop 2008. On the show floor, start-up Arastra received its fair share of Vegas buzz. The company was founded by former Sun Microsystems bigwig Andy Bechtolsheim, but the real story here is that Arastra is pushing the 10-Gigabit Ethernet performance limit with prices at around $500 per port. It will be tough for old Andy to crack this market with the big boys, but this is pretty impressive.

2. Don't forget Cisco
Is Cisco Systems vulnerable in the data center switching or other networking spaces? Probably not. Senior Vice President Jayshree Ullal's team won the "best of Interop" award for Cisco's new Nexus data center switches and picked up another award for application acceleration.

3. Virtualization
I am intrigued by Citrix Systems' strategy that blends server/desktop virtualization with its leading XenApp (formerly Presentation Server) and NetScaler application acceleration portfolios. Citrix is thinking about virtualization, asset optimization, and traffic management from end-to-end. This is where the industry is headed; Citrix has a pretty good idea of how to get there.

4. Nortel gets the chutzpah award
Nortel Networks is on the offensive and its target is--obviously--Cisco. Nortel announced 60 companies that chose it over Cisco, a pretty bold gesture on Nortel's part. Nortel is also featuring an "energy calculator" at its booth where users can enter a Cisco and Nortel configuration and get data on power consumption comparisons. No gimmicky booth babes or giveaways, just "go for the throat" guerrilla marketing.

On tap Wednesday: more virtualization and wireless networking. Should be fun.

Correction: This story initially said attendance at Interop was down. Attendance at the show was actually up from last year.

There's a good piece by Saul Hansell over on The New York Times' "Bits" blog.

Hansell describes how Comcast is being criticized for low picture quality on certain broadcasts. That's interesting, especially in light of the contention between Comcast and DirecTV on this very issue, but it isn't the most important point in Hansell's post.

Hansell goes on to give a reasonable explanation of the basic issues involved, and mentions the likely future of cable TV: digital video distributed over Internet-like network switches. Instead of always sending every TV channel to every house, a switched system sends only the data for the channels that are being watched. (While it's fair to say that the capacity of such a system has no arbitrary limits, it isn't "infinite" as Hansell said.)

But there is a big practical difference between a system with hundreds of channels and one with, at least potentially, millions. With switched video, every channel is "on demand"--and anything that customers demand can be made available. Imagine YouTube in true HD, for example. That's impossible today, but with switched video, it's merely expensive. :-)

I wrote about switched-video technology back in 2001 in my column for Electronic Business magazine, and honestly I thought this technology would be in use by now, at least in test markets.

Verizon's Fios service has most of the necessary characteristics, but even Fios carries video in pretty much the same way copper-based cable systems do, except using an optical carrier over fiber. (Wikipedia has a decent explanation here.)

Well, there's no hurry. We'll get there eventually.

I was in New York yesterday to attend Juniper Networks' big product introduction. If you haven't heard, Juniper announced a new line of Ethernet switches, from small access switches to big data center and core switches.

While I believe this is very good news for Juniper, I couldn't help but overhear some of the lugubrious pontifications of other industry and financial analysts. I expect the "glass half full" crowd to say things like:

1. Big deal, there are already a lot of Ethernet switching companies, so Juniper is just piling onto an existing market. This isn't about Ethernet switching; it's about end-to-end Juniper networks. Don't get me wrong, if I were a Juniper sales rep and one of my customers wanted to buy a few switches, I'd gladly take the business. That said, Juniper can now offer its value from edge to core and compete with Cisco Systems on big enterprise deals.

2. Even with Ethernet switching, Juniper still can't match Cisco's product portfolio. This is true but also fairly obvious. With this type of logic, IBM would have been the only IT company ever, since Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and EMC had product gaps of their own. Ethernet switches really elevate Juniper's reach but the company remains especially careful to pick the right battles and team up with others where it can supplement its internal efforts. To demonstrate this, Juniper made sure it went to New York with partners IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle--a pretty good lineup if you ask me.

3. Juniper has no presence in the enterprise. This assertion is based upon history rather than fact. A few years ago Juniper had a very small enterprise footprint but with the acquisition of vendors such as NetScreen (security) and Peribit (network/application/WAN acceleration), it has steadily gained traction. Now it has another killer product to push to existing customers and new prospects.

4. Juniper should have bought an existing Ethernet switching vendor rather than reinvent an old product. Juniper looked at this option but decided that the benefits of an internal effort outweighed the acquisition route. One of Juniper's core strengths is its JUNOS operating system. By rolling its own switches, it has one operating system across its entire networking portfolio, so its value proposition and software control remains intact. This will help the company sell end-to-end Juniper networks, not a bunch of piece parts.

I don't get the doom and gloom here. Overall, Juniper really expanded its total addressable market and individual deal opportunities. What's more, the company has a lot more flexibility to develop its own software or partner with other market leaders. Of course it has to execute but if I were a Juniper enterprise sales rep, I'd be doing backflips today.

(Credit: SuperMediaStore.com)

You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many HDMI ports. If you just added a component to your home theater (a Blu-ray player, perhaps? Wink, wink) but don't have a port free on your TV, check out this no-brand 2-port HDMI switch. It's available from SuperMediaStore.com for just $22.99, ground shipping included!

The switch supports HDCP and resolutions of up to 1080p. It's a self-powered manual switch, meaning you'll have to haul your bum off the couch whenever you want to change inputs. You'll also have to supply a pair of extra HDMI cables; the same store sells them for $9.99 apiece (when you buy at least two).

To date, TiVo's CableCard DVRs weren't compatible with SDV channels.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

As of the most recent software update (9.2), TiVo's added quite a few fixes to its high-def DVRs: the Series3 and the TiVo HD now offer the TiVo To Go, Multi-Room Viewing, Rhapsody, and expandable storage features that were originally promised. Now it appears that TiVo has solved the other big sticking point: compatibility with Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology. The company announced today that it's developed (with the help of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association) an add-on USB adapter that will enable its two high-def DVRs to properly tune cable channels being broadcast with SDV technology.

Assuming it pans out, the SDV compatibility is something of a breakthrough because it removes a giant caveat from the buying decision for potential TiVo consumers. SDV technology has been hailed as something of a savior for bandwidth-starved cable operators, because it allows them to cram more digital and high-definition channels into their existing channel space as they struggle for "most HD channels" bragging rights with satellite and fiber competitors. The problem to date was that SDV channels--which effectively are delivered "on demand" when you tune to them--were not available on third-party cable boxes using existing CableCard technology. In other words, customers with standard cable boxes were fine, but anyone with a third-party CableCard device--such as a TiVo, some home theater PCs, and many "DCR" (digital cable ready) TVs--would be unable to watch any of the SDV channels.

With TiVo owners still in the minority and SDV technology not yet widely deployed, the incompatibility problem was a looming issue on the horizon. But with more cable providers set to roll out SDV in the upcoming months, it was set to bloom into a full-blown crisis, with TiVo owners suddenly finding themselves unable to watch new HD channels coming online on their cable system. With a solution now on the roadmap, TiVo's high-def DVRs look a lot more future-proof--and easier to recommend.

The press release specifies that the USB adapter will work with TiVo Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs, as well as "any Unidirectional Digital Cable Ready Product (UDCP) that has a USB connector and necessary firmware"--which, ideally, includes the forthcoming Digeo Moxi and aforementioned PC devices, as well as future third-party video devices as well. (With USB ports and upgradeable firmware still a relative rarity on TVs--plus the fact that CableCards are disappearing from the spec sheets of most current TV models--don't hold your breath for an update if you're one of the small number of HDTV owners using a CableCard.) The new adapters are scheduled to be available in the second quarter of 2008. No pricing was specified.