If yours is like many Wall Street firms, you'd like to upgrade the one-gigabit Ethernet networks in your data centers to speed up applications, but you're not sure you want to make the leap to an exotic alternative like Infiniband or Fibre Channel. Startup company Teak Technologies offers a radically different idea: replace your end-of-row network switches with a layer of small, local switches that fit directly into racks or blades and, according to Teak, can accelerate an Ethernet network, save money and simplify network management."So far, firms have had to use Infiniband and Fibre Channel to deliver high performance," says Sanjay Dua, Teak's chief marketing officer. "Now we're able to deliver Infiniband performance at Ethernet prices."

Dua says his company's technology can eliminate the retransmissions that typically occur on Ethernet networks when packets are dropped. "Today, many networks are overprovisioned because people throw more bandwidth at the problem," Dua says. Teak's AZ-10GE technology tweaks existing network interface cards from vendors such as Neterion and NetEffect, providing high-speed control algorithms that allow switches to coordinate traffic between end points and eliminate packet loss and retransmissions, so traffic can flow unimpeded at the full line rate -- Dua says this increases efficiency by a factor of four over a run-of-the-mill 10gigE network.

Teak's cards already work with IBM and HP blades; in May, Teak will introduce a standalone switch that will sit on top of a blade/server rack.

A layer of switches at the rack level, Dua says, can take the place of more expensive traditional switches. For instance, where a standard end-of-row switch costs $4,000 per port, his company's cards cost about $700 per port. At the same time, the Teak NICs assure line rate performance at 10gigE. "Today switches cannot give you line-grade performance if you want loss-free transmissions," Dua says.

Teak is not trying to compete with Infiniband providers. "Infiniband is a remarkable technology, those companies are ahead of the Ethernet game by a couple of years and already have 60 gigabit solutions," Dua says. "There will be a market for Infiniband but it will be a smaller and smaller niche."