Virtual Chassis and new Juniper techniques in the Stratus switches to replace Spanning Tree in Ethernet data center networks will be offered as an alternative to the IETF TRILL specification. TRILL, or Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, is designed to overcome the slow topology reconvergence times associated with Spanning Tree by enabling shortest-path multihop routing for large-scale Ethernet and Fibre-Channel-over-Ethernet data center networks.

Juniper, however, is of TRILL while and have both said that their shortest-path multihop techniques are both based on TRILL.

"(Stratus) is radically different than what we're seeing from Cisco," a source says. Cisco, the market leader in Ethernet switching, does not want to endorse a technique that reduces the number of ports or switching tiers in a network, he says. "How aggressive can Cisco be when these new architectures cut down the number of switch ports?"

Sources says the Stratus switches could also include a traffic segmentation technique above and beyond VLANs; Layer 2 encryption in either switch-to-switch or port-to-port configurations; and tight integration with virtual switches on blade servers and NICs, perhaps through planned support for the emerging IEEE 802.1Qbg Edge .

IBM partnered with Juniper on the Stratus project but one source says there will be virtually no IBM content in the products.