Packet Has High Expectations For New Switch Company’s Network Routing Switch Could Become Centerpiece Of Product Line

Packet Engines is preparing to roll out its latest product, a huge high speed computer network routing switch that company officials say will be the centerpiece of its product line.

“We don’t know what the market will be yet,” said Bernard Daines, Packet Engine’s president and founder, “but we are predicting that our sales of this product will be many millions of dollars.

“This market is just beginning to take off.”

The new product is called the PE-4884, and is named after Union Pacific’s famous “Big Boy,” which was considered the most powerful steam locomotive ever built.

The name is appropriate, company officials say, because their PE-4884 is the most powerful gigabit ethernet routing switch ever built.

Packet Engines manufactures products which allow computer networks to exchange information 10 times faster than the current industry standard.

Daines was a pioneer in creating technology that allowed personal computers to be tied together into networks. The original networks exchanged information at the rate of 10 megabits per second. The format upon which that technology was based was called ethernet.

Daines was then co-founder of a company that created fast ethernet devices. They allowed computer networks to bump up the exchange rate to 100 megabits per second.

Then in 1994, he founded Packet Engines in order to make the leap to 1,000 megabits - one gigabit - per second. Now, Spokane-based Packet Engines is competing with about 20 other companies worldwide to capture the emerging gigabit ethernet market.

The company has already introduced a device that when installed in a personal computer enables that computer to handle information at the one-gigabit-per-second rate. It has also begun marketing a device that ties small numbers of computers into work groups capable of gigabit ethernet exchanges.

The PE-4884 will be used to tie the computer work groups together into larger networks.

“This device will be the center of a network for an organization that needs to handle a lot of traffic,” Daines said.

In the past, he explained, most of the need for high-speed exchanges has taken place at the workgroup level, while the backbone that hooked the work groups together bore relatively little traffic.

“But that is being turned around,” he said. “The backbones are getting more and more traffic and the need to move up to gigabit rates is becoming more and more evident.

“This device is the traffic cop in the middle of such a network.”

Although the switch is not yet complete, Packet Engines unveiled the device at a major industry trade show in Atlanta. Daines said the switch was a finalist in the best-of-show category, “which is pretty good for a box that we haven’t even gotten plugged in yet.”

He describes the speed and capacity of the device as “stunning.”

When ready for production later this year, Daines said the PE-4884 will sell for $60,000 to $80,000.

Daines said Packet Engines took another critical step earlier this month when it entered into an agreement with Cabletron Systems, a leader in the sale of computer network products worldwide.

Cabletron will become a reseller of Packet Engines products, and the two companies have agreed to a set of inter-operability criteria for their products.

“This is not an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deal,” Daines said. ‘Quite often an OEM deal is hidden because the reseller sells the products under their name.

“But their sales force is showing and selling our products with our name on them. That’s an important thrust in distribution for us.”

, DataTimes