Startup Nishan Systems Inc. today announced that Telseon Inc. will use Nishans switches to offer storage services to its customers (see Telseon, Nishan Join on SAN Solution).
The deal demonstrates that Nishans basic concept -- extending Fibre Channel-based storage area networks (SANs) over IP-based telecom networks -- has passed muster with a carrier, Telseon.
Before Telseon took the plunge, it conducted a series of tests to make sure that Nishans equipment would interoperate with the gigabit Ethernet equipment in its metropolitan networks. Telseon created two SANs using Nishans IPS 3000 switches and then linked them together, first using a direct connection and then using part of Telseons network.
We were delighted, when we tested in the labs, to find how easy [Nishan's equipment] was to set up, says David White, director of product marketing at Telseon. In doing the test itself, we got very low latency performance from our network. The latency in the Telseon metro network link increased by only 1.2 percent."
The 1.2 percent additional latency cited by White is "quite reasonable, quite good, in fact," according to Dave Schaeffer, CEO of one of Telseon's competitors, Cogent Communications Inc. Cogent is offering similar services using Cisco 5200-series routers that do Escon, Ficon, and Fibre Channel conversions, Schaeffer adds.