Westcon teams with Cisco Systems in Token Ring to Ethernet migration

Channel provider of networking technology products, Westcon, has joined forces with Cisco Systems whereby companies running Token Ring networks can migrate cost effectively to Ethernet technology providing a strategy to effectively scale and remain competitive in the new Internet Economy.

This was announced by Gareth Thomas, Cisco Systems product manager at Westcon, who says the Token Ring market has lost critical mass and is quickly becoming an orphaned technology.

"The majority of the remaining Token Ring users plan to migrate to Ethernet over the next two years. In South Africa there are hundreds of enterprises such as financial institutions, retailers, insurance companies and other large corporations who could benefit from the promotion campaign we have initiated," says Thomas.

The campaign is structured in such a way that Cisco and Westcon are prepared to "buy back" Token Ring kit for up to 20% of its value depending on the specific product. This will appeal to large corporations who would otherwise write off the equipment, which is fast becoming obsolete and can no longer support the new technologies that are not designed for Token Ring.

"Once we have acquired the outdated products we produce Certificates of Destruction and when they are approved by Cisco, the equipment will be destroyed in an environmentally friendly fashion," says Thomas.

He says the last six months has seen a predicted upturn of companies migrating to Ethernet twice that over the previous six months as corporations are moving into the Internet Economy.

The joint migration programme known as Cisco`s Competitive Technology Migration Path CTMP category has been created to explicitly allow for CAUs (Central Access Units), MAUs (Multistation Access Units) and LAMs (Lobe Attachment Modules).

Kevin Mitchell, Systems Engineer for Cisco suggests, "Organisations should act now to begin migration to Ethernet, as staying with Token Ring requires a continuous investment in this legacy technology. As LANs are used to deliver new, increasingly network-dependent applications, investments to increase both capacity and resilience are required."

Cisco has recommended for some time that organisations with Token Ring LANs migrate to Ethernet, because of its lower TCO, greater choice of suppliers and products, and the ability to take advantage of Ethernet-only appliances, including terminal devices.

Organisations can now expect to see only small improvements in the price performance and functionality of Token Ring, while Ethernet continues to evolve rapidly, further widening the gulf in TCO between the two technologies.

Some motivating factors supporting migration are:

• Ethernet supports emerging technologies, networked applications, and gigabit speeds, unlike Token Ring.

• Major Token Ring vendors are exiting the business and others are announcing the end of life of Token Ring products.

• Only one vendor, now actively promotes high-Speed Token Ring (HSTR), which was once supported by many Token Ring vendors.

• Long-term costs to maintain a Token Ring environment are much higher than an equivalent environment based on Ethernet.

• The pool of skilled Token Ring technicians is continuing to diminish over time.

Although there may be significant transition costs, such as re-cabling or adapting existing cables and staff retraining, these are offset by the ongoing savings, reduction in risk and access to new functionality.

Once an organisation has decided to migrate from Token Ring to Ethernet, each site can be migrated separately. The only impact of running some sites on one technology and some on the other is when equipment, such as servers and PCs, needs to be moved between sites. Many organisations choose to migrate their smaller locations (such as branch offices) first, since changing these is less disruptive than changing the larger locations.

In conclusion Mitchell adds, "With the number of vendors committed to Token Ring dwindling, staying with Token Ring is starting to represent a business risk. The cost of living with Token Ring is rapidly approaching the cost of migrating to Ethernet. Therefore, organisations should begin the process of migration: the parallel backbone approach is preferable for large sites with low throughput; large, higher-throughput sites can be migrated using a common ATM backbone or, like most small sites, using a "big bang" one-step migration".