The arrival of 10G-over-UTP solutions in the market generated a good deal of curiosity about its possibilities and potential benefits. However, given pre pre-ratification stage of the solutions, not everybody jumped for these solutions.

Yet, takers were not missing. There were at least three early orders for 10G-over-UTP.

Moreover, many network managers wanted to evaluate the solutions and hence there was a lot of interest around the technology.

Also, they wanted to understand and review their cabling roadmap in the wake of recent developments. The more specific things here were: which tech, among Cat 5e, Cat 6, and Cat A6 will have the longest shelf life? Or, is Cat 6 the path of golden mean?

As one already knows, Cat A6-augmented Cat 6-is the proposed standard for 10G-over-UTP.

As far as the structured cabling industry in India is concerned, 10G-over-UTP solutions generated a lot of interest. Most importantly, the hype was quickly followed by some actual orders and shipments.

Even as the IEEE 802.3an task force continues to work on the requirements of twisted pair cables for supporting 10G Ethernet, at least three vendors have come out with their 10G over UTP offerings in India. The credit to do that first, however, goes to ADC Krone, which came out with its 10G solution in early 2004.

The product launch gave Krone an early-mover advantage, which the company was able to leverage successfully.

ADC Krone is understood to have bagged at least three significant orders for its 10G-over-UTP solution, CopperTen. Two of these orders came from i2 Technologies and TCS.

The CopperTen installation at i2 Technologies connects 4,000 points, servers and firewall systems within its software development facility.

Systimax and Belden also came out with their 10G solutions, Systimax GigaSpeed X10D and Belden IBDN 10GX respectively.

Tyco is also ready with a 10G-over-UTP solution.

All these solutions, however, are in the pre-standard stage. An IEEE group is already working on the 10G UTP standard and the ratification is likely to happen sometime in 2006. Once ratified, the standard will be called Cat A6.

Other companies are also testing 10G solutions at their respective labs.

All in all, the 10GE-over-UTP solutions that hit the market during the fiscal threw up a pleasant surprise by accounting for 2 percent of the installations.

Vendors are unanimous of the view that early adopters of 10G-over-UTP will be data centers and other bandwidth-intensive businesses. Also, post the ratification, 10G solutions will also be used for building backbones.

10G will also compete against fiber to an extent. True, copper will have disadvantages against fiber in terms of electrical interference, but there will be notable advantages too. The most significant of these would be in terms of lower equipment-and installation and maintenance-costs. Also, the connections remain copper-to-copper and thus the cost of changing electrons to photons and back to electrons is avoided.

The uptake of 10G-over-UTP in the market will also depend on how quickly vendors are able to educate enterprises on the benefits and possible usage of the new technology, as also on how fast apps move in to demand the higher bandwidth-and speed.