100 Gig Ethernet. Where It's At. Where It's Going - Page 2

All that said, Cheng noted that on a capital expenditure basis, the cost of 100 GbE is currently sometimes higher than a 10x10 gig deployment.

"As this is the first generation of 100 GbE costs the equipment costs can be higher," Cheng said. "Over time with innovation and economies of scale, the costs will come down."

100 GbE Standards

Cisco is also pushing its 100 GbE capabilities, which are a key part of their CRS-3 core routing platform. Cisco however doesn't see their solution as being the same as what rival Juniper is offering.

"Other vendors such as Juniper might be touting 100 GbE but if you really look at what they're doing it's not 100 GbE in its true form," Stephen Liu, senior manager of service provider marketing for routing and switching solutions at Cisco told InternetNews.com."

Liu said that the Juniper 100 GbE implementation is a 2x50 Gbps approach.

"There are real downsides to 2 x50," Liu said. "It may sound the same but it's not necessarily the same."

Liu also alleged that the Juniper 100 GbE implementation is not interoperable with 100 GbE solutions from other vendors.

Juniper disagrees.

"Juniper’s 100 GbE is fully standards compliant," Luc Ceuppens, VP of product marketing for Juniper Networks told InternetNews.com. "We have also done full interoperability testing with solutions from all of the leading vendors."

Cueppens also address the 2 x 50 GbE deployment question.

"Juniper’s 100 GbE for the T1600 is logically 2x50 GbE, but it is not an issue for any of our customers," Cueppens said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.