The two models, the OmniSwitch 9700 and 9800, are aimed at the enterprise datacenter and address companies' need for better QoS, scalability, security, and VoIP and multicast application support, said Brian Witt, director of product marketing for Alcatel's data networking products.

"10 Gig to the desktop is realistic now," said Steve Schuchart, a senior analyst at Current Analysis. "We're starting to see 10 Gig NICs and servers that can do 10 Gig come out. If you want to run VoIP, or run 10 Gig to the desktop, you'll need to put in 10 Gig from your wiring closet to the aggregation layer or aggregation layer to the core."

The OmniSwitch 9700 has a 10-slot chassis, and the 9800 has an 18-slot chassis; components on both are hot-swappable and fully redundant. Both switch models have built-in support for IPv4, IPv6, multicasting, and server clustering and high-availability features.

While some of those technologies aren't yet standard in the enterprise, companies should take them into account when planning future network expansion strategies and equipment purchases, said Witt.

"The next generation of a 10 Gig network that an enterprise buys, the backbone of that has about a four- to six-year lifetime," he explained. "Clearly there are some market segments where IPv6 is a strong requirement today, but for the broader enterprise market and considering this five-year lifetime, we think people should be deploying IPv6-capable switches and future-proofing their network now."