Network Hardware Vendors Fight To Keep Up With Bandwidth Demands

Unless you have been in a coma, or living in a cave for the past year, you should be aware that the whole world is being converged into a single, IP-based network. Telephone and television service are both available via IP. Video services such as YouTube.com, and video conferencing for enterprise collaboration also consume a fair amount of IP bandwidth. As consumers and businesses aggressively embrace all of the new IP-based technologies, the network hardware vendors are racing to try to stay ahead of the curve and provide next-generation solutions to meet the bandwidth needs. Cisco, Juniper, Force 10, ConSentry Networks, and Enterasys Networks are all rolling out updates and new hardware to support bandwidth-heavy applications, such as virtualization, collaboration, unified communications and video. Check out this NetworkWorld article for more details about this trend.