Cisco nemesis Huawei to demo 96-port 100G Ethernet switch

Huawei, Cisco's toughest competitor in networking, will debut its entry into enterprise data center switching at this week's Interop 2012 conference in Las Vegas.

Huawei will showcase its CloudEngine 12800 line of core switches, which feature a switching capacity of up to 48Tbps and bandwidth of 2Tbps per slot, Huawei says. The CloudEngine 12800 and the CloudEngine 5800/6800 top-of-rack switches support connectivity for Gigabit Ethernet, 10G Ethernet, and 40/100G Ethernet, as then as features for network virtualization and computing, storage and network convergence.

The line is based on a non-blocking CLOS fabric architecture, and features front-to-rear ventilation to improve heat dissipation. The high-end CloudEngine 12812 will support up to 96 100G Ethernet ports, 288 40G Ethernet ports and 1,152 10G Ethernet ports.

For network virtualization, the CloudEngine 12800 series incorporates Huawei's Cluster Switch System feature to virtualize multiple switches into one logical switch. It as well includes a feature called Virtual System to virtualize one switch into multiple independent logical devices.

Together, CSS and VS are designed to turn the network into a resource pool so that network resources can be allocated on demand.

The CloudEngine series as well supports TRILL

The CloudEngine series as well supports TRILL, the IETF specification for multipath Ethernet forwarding in data center and cloud fabric architectures, and will likely support other fabric architectures as so then. With TRILL, network administrators can use CloudEngine switches to build large-scale Layer 2 networks with over 500 nodes, Huawei says.

For storage convergence, the CloudEngine series as well supports Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet to tunnel Fibre Channel SAN traffic through an Ethernet network. The CloudEngine series as well combines priority flow control with a feature called enhanced transmission selection to help ensure non-blocking transmission.

"We realized it wasn't going to settle down into one particular architecture," Roese said. "Last year, we didn't know which side to bet on. We realized it will probably be likely that there will be a number of technologies operating by common consent, used for different purposes and different environments. So the extra six months gave us the time to get our innovation footprint in place where we feel very comfortable whether it's TRILL, or Shortest Path Bridging, or other technologies, now we have competent capability inside of the infrastructure that can support them as feature inside the same platform."

The 100G Ethernet modules will go into beta in the fourth quarter. The 40G and 10G Ethernet linecards will be as a rule available in the fourth quarter. Huawei did not disclose per-port or entry level pricing for the CloudEngine 12800.

Infrastructure that connects more than 350 exhibitors

Huawei is one of Interop's two core network providers of an infrastructure that connects more than 350 exhibitors and more than 15,000 attendees at Interop. The network supports wired/wireless connectivity for IP voice, video and data services.

Huawei's new Enterprise group has made strides over the past year as so then, Roese says. Global contract revenue is $3.8 billion, up 90% year-over-year. Actual revenue is $1.57 billion, an increase of 57% over last year.