15 ms·

Back in 2008 Fujitsu has one of the best performing 10Gbps Switches. We were building 40 Gbps packet sniffers at Google (4x 10 Gbps NICs) and needed switches th

by a11r 15d ago

Back in 2008 Fujitsu has one of the best performing 10Gbps Switches. We were building 40 Gbps packet sniffers at Google (4x 10 Gbps NICs) and needed switches that could do things like mirror traffic across ports at line rate. Fujitsu was way ahead of the pack. I always wondered what held them back from building a meaningful networking business in the US.

calmworm 15d ago
[flagged]
- HPsquared 15d ago
  The other sort of network, ironically.
- filoleg 15d ago
  Do you mind elaborating? This is the first time ever I am hearing of Fujitsu being involved in any bribing/lobbying controversy in the US (whether as a victim or an offender), and I doubt I am the only user in this thread in this position. Unless it is a very well-known controversy, I feel like there is a need for extra context here. I am not even asking for anything of the "proof beyond any reasonable doubt" nature, I simply want to understand what you are trying to reference.
  - calmworm 15d ago
    I wasn’t referencing anything specific, but a general response to how/why many companies can’t or won’t do business in the United States.
    - protocolture 15d ago
      >I wasn’t referencing anything specific, but a general response to how/why many companies can’t or won’t do business in the United States. Its a genuinely terrible place to do business, and its full of genuinely terrible people to do business with. Oh and Trump made it a bit worse with Tariffs I guess. Hope this helps.
throwup238 15d ago
> I always wondered what held them back from building a meaningful networking business in the US. It was just timing. Their networking gear was built on some very impressive ASICs which became commodity chips a few years later before they could grow. Arista, Juniper, et al ate their lunch using other vendors’ IP. IIRC it was Broadcom and Fulcrum that released the chips that killed them.
- Den_VR 15d ago
  Another broadcom related tragedy
  - fzeindl 14d ago
    Broadcom has a vast amount of patents that they leverage in their business decisions.
- noobplus 15d ago
  [dead]
alightsoul 15d ago
Having a us based vendor. Fujitsu is huge in Asia for ISPs and so is Mitsubishi and Sumitomo (yes they made or used to make network equipment too)
- hinkley 15d ago
  We have alliances with Japan and S Korea which predispose us to believing we might be able to get a clean supply chain from them if a new Cold War starts. Out other options don’t even pass a giggle test and that’s the state of the world until some manufacturing is brought back onshore for strategic reasons. The same way Congress has been subsidizing Boeing and its competitors since WW2 to make sure we can build things that fly if another war ever starts. Or with drones, that we can build ones that will be flown BY US instead of defecting the moment they get in range of the other side.
  - xenadu02 15d ago
    > The same way Congress has been subsidizing Boeing and its competitors Funny you should mention that. Boeing deliberately buys 35% of a 787's airframe from Japan (along with other equipment for the 787 and other models). That's a deliberate play: we buy a lot of parts from Japanese companies, your airlines buy mostly Boeing airplanes. Even today despite some diversification Boeing has over 70% marketshare in Japan. If you ever wondered why Airbus setup factories in the USA that's a similar deal. The US Gov and Mil want to ensure factories and workforce on home soil should the need arise. In some unrecorded meetings somewhere strong hints were no doubt dropped that it would be in Airbus' best interest to play ball. They obliged. That said the USA is the largest supplier of parts for Airbus airliners so there's also a benefit to having aerospace manufacturing and R&D here.
    - Lumich 14d ago
      Boeing proposes sth called the “Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot” to add drone-like remote control capabilities to its airliners (for security reasons, obviously). I'm not aware of a similar offering for Airbus but I have no doubt such a capability has existed in Airbus as well for perhaps two decades. I expected development of such a sensitive system for Airbus to be based in France, but your comment about “strong hints” and “play ball” has me thinking…
ricksunny 15d ago
>We were building 40 Gbps packet sniffers at Google (4x 10 Gbps NICs) and needed switches that could do things like mirror traffic across ports at line rate I'm sure there were good reaasons for this, but man this just sounds bad. Like that's the spec I think NSA must give to their contractors outfitting 611 Folsom Street's Room 641A
- unethical_ban 15d ago
  There are companies that mirror their traffic to storage for a few days to be able to look back and troubleshoot issues. ALL their traffic, proactively.
  - idiotsecant 15d ago
    I do that with very, very low traffic industrial automation systems.
    - deleted 15d ago
      [deleted]
  - collinmanderson 15d ago
    For US federal government, "Office of Management and Budget" says to store 72 hours of packet capture, since 2021 (partially in response to SolarWinds attack). (M-21-31) https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/TLP%20CLEAR%20-%20Guidance%20for%20Implementing%20M-21-31_Improving%20the%20Federal%20Governments%20Investigative%20and%20Remediation%20Capabilities_.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/TLP%20CLEAR...
- wmf 15d ago
  Nah, packet mirroring is a standard networking feature and ideally every feature is line rate.
  - Zigurd 15d ago
    Indeed. Juniper had this over 20 years ago.
kev009 15d ago
AFAIK those sold relatively well, considering the TCO of both sides (NICs were very expensive and there were like a dozen companies vying for position once upon a time). They were also interesting because they were cut-through. CX4 was noticeably lower latency than SFP+. So a very fast, but feature limited architecture which is probably why other players like Cisco and then Arista (aka Broadcom) took over.
numpad0 15d ago
The likely just didn't want another round of tantrums and troubles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Semiconductor_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Semico...
kjs3 15d ago
The XG series switches? Force10 sold them until Dell bought Force10 and continued to sell them (although the firmware changed a lot along the way). They were, AFAIK, pretty popular in the US under the Dell brand. My home network is XG2000 10G core and a few XG0224 1G/10G dist. Very nice switches.
- xenadu02 15d ago
  Ubiquity proved you can bust into the market from the bottom end if you want. Nothing was stopping them from doing the same but like many companies they prefer to focus on how much money they can siphon from the Fortune 1000 so I can't say I feel sorry for them.
  - kjs3 15d ago
    I'm not sure why that's relevent, particularly since Ubiquity's approach wouldn't have remotely competed with Fujitsus custom ASICs if they were actual contemporaries, but you clearly have an agenda you're in love with, so...ok, sure.
conception 15d ago
Their servers were gorgeous (on the inside) as well. Clean designs, no clutter.
thpalksdfo55 15d ago
Seems like a story mirrored across Japanese companies.

by a11r 15d ago

calmworm 15d ago

[flagged]

HPsquared 15d ago
The other sort of network, ironically.
filoleg 15d ago
Do you mind elaborating? This is the first time ever I am hearing of Fujitsu being involved in any bribing/lobbying controversy in the US (whether as a victim or an offender), and I doubt I am the only user in this thread in this position. Unless it is a very well-known controversy, I feel like there is a need for extra context here. I am not even asking for anything of the "proof beyond any reasonable doubt" nature, I simply want to understand what you are trying to reference.
- calmworm 15d ago
  I wasn’t referencing anything specific, but a general response to how/why many companies can’t or won’t do business in the United States.
  - protocolture 15d ago
    >I wasn’t referencing anything specific, but a general response to how/why many companies can’t or won’t do business in the United States. Its a genuinely terrible place to do business, and its full of genuinely terrible people to do business with. Oh and Trump made it a bit worse with Tariffs I guess. Hope this helps.

throwup238 15d ago

> I always wondered what held them back from building a meaningful networking business in the US. It was just timing. Their networking gear was built on some very impressive ASICs which became commodity chips a few years later before they could grow. Arista, Juniper, et al ate their lunch using other vendors’ IP. IIRC it was Broadcom and Fulcrum that released the chips that killed them.

Den_VR 15d ago
Another broadcom related tragedy
- fzeindl 14d ago
  Broadcom has a vast amount of patents that they leverage in their business decisions.
noobplus 15d ago
[dead]

alightsoul 15d ago

Having a us based vendor. Fujitsu is huge in Asia for ISPs and so is Mitsubishi and Sumitomo (yes they made or used to make network equipment too)

hinkley 15d ago
We have alliances with Japan and S Korea which predispose us to believing we might be able to get a clean supply chain from them if a new Cold War starts. Out other options don’t even pass a giggle test and that’s the state of the world until some manufacturing is brought back onshore for strategic reasons. The same way Congress has been subsidizing Boeing and its competitors since WW2 to make sure we can build things that fly if another war ever starts. Or with drones, that we can build ones that will be flown BY US instead of defecting the moment they get in range of the other side.
- xenadu02 15d ago
  > The same way Congress has been subsidizing Boeing and its competitors Funny you should mention that. Boeing deliberately buys 35% of a 787's airframe from Japan (along with other equipment for the 787 and other models). That's a deliberate play: we buy a lot of parts from Japanese companies, your airlines buy mostly Boeing airplanes. Even today despite some diversification Boeing has over 70% marketshare in Japan. If you ever wondered why Airbus setup factories in the USA that's a similar deal. The US Gov and Mil want to ensure factories and workforce on home soil should the need arise. In some unrecorded meetings somewhere strong hints were no doubt dropped that it would be in Airbus' best interest to play ball. They obliged. That said the USA is the largest supplier of parts for Airbus airliners so there's also a benefit to having aerospace manufacturing and R&D here.
  - Lumich 14d ago
    Boeing proposes sth called the “Boeing Honeywell Uninterruptible Autopilot” to add drone-like remote control capabilities to its airliners (for security reasons, obviously). I'm not aware of a similar offering for Airbus but I have no doubt such a capability has existed in Airbus as well for perhaps two decades. I expected development of such a sensitive system for Airbus to be based in France, but your comment about “strong hints” and “play ball” has me thinking…

ricksunny 15d ago

>We were building 40 Gbps packet sniffers at Google (4x 10 Gbps NICs) and needed switches that could do things like mirror traffic across ports at line rate I'm sure there were good reaasons for this, but man this just sounds bad. Like that's the spec I think NSA must give to their contractors outfitting 611 Folsom Street's Room 641A

unethical_ban 15d ago
There are companies that mirror their traffic to storage for a few days to be able to look back and troubleshoot issues. ALL their traffic, proactively.
- idiotsecant 15d ago
  I do that with very, very low traffic industrial automation systems.
  - deleted 15d ago
    [deleted]
- collinmanderson 15d ago
  For US federal government, "Office of Management and Budget" says to store 72 hours of packet capture, since 2021 (partially in response to SolarWinds attack). (M-21-31) https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/TLP%20CLEAR%20-%20Guidance%20for%20Implementing%20M-21-31_Improving%20the%20Federal%20Governments%20Investigative%20and%20Remediation%20Capabilities_.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/TLP%20CLEAR...
wmf 15d ago
Nah, packet mirroring is a standard networking feature and ideally every feature is line rate.
- Zigurd 15d ago
  Indeed. Juniper had this over 20 years ago.

kev009 15d ago

AFAIK those sold relatively well, considering the TCO of both sides (NICs were very expensive and there were like a dozen companies vying for position once upon a time). They were also interesting because they were cut-through. CX4 was noticeably lower latency than SFP+. So a very fast, but feature limited architecture which is probably why other players like Cisco and then Arista (aka Broadcom) took over.

numpad0 15d ago

The likely just didn't want another round of tantrums and troubles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Semiconductor_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Semico...

kjs3 15d ago

The XG series switches? Force10 sold them until Dell bought Force10 and continued to sell them (although the firmware changed a lot along the way). They were, AFAIK, pretty popular in the US under the Dell brand. My home network is XG2000 10G core and a few XG0224 1G/10G dist. Very nice switches.

xenadu02 15d ago
Ubiquity proved you can bust into the market from the bottom end if you want. Nothing was stopping them from doing the same but like many companies they prefer to focus on how much money they can siphon from the Fortune 1000 so I can't say I feel sorry for them.
- kjs3 15d ago
  I'm not sure why that's relevent, particularly since Ubiquity's approach wouldn't have remotely competed with Fujitsus custom ASICs if they were actual contemporaries, but you clearly have an agenda you're in love with, so...ok, sure.

conception 15d ago

Their servers were gorgeous (on the inside) as well. Clean designs, no clutter.

thpalksdfo55 15d ago

Seems like a story mirrored across Japanese companies.