Another interesting startup believes that the time for optical Ethernet has arrived. Force 10 Networks Inc. is staffing up with an impressive lineup of executives from the likes of Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR).

This week Force10 announced that John Jendricks has joined as CIO and vice president of business development. Jendricks came from Juniper Networks, where he held the same two titles (see Force10 Hires Juniper, Cisco Execs).

Force10 also announced that Steve Mullaney, formerly of Cisco, has become its new vice president of marketing. Mullaney joined Cisco in March 2000 when Growth Networks, where he was a marketing VP, was acquired.

Only a month ago, Marc Randall, a seven-year Cisco engineer, was lured to Force10 to become vice president of engineering (see Cisco Engineering Exec Joins Force 10).

Force10 still hasn't given many specifics about the gear it's building, other than to say it's creating carrier-class 10-gigabit Ethernet solutions. The company's gear will most likely be used to internetwork in MANs (metropolitan area networks) and WANs (wide area networks), as well as for Web-hosting applications.

An account in Network World some months ago said that Force10's director of product marketing, Nan Chen, gave a presentation at one conference where he said, "T-1 will be replaced with Ethernet," and cited predictions that the market for 10-gig in the WAN will be at $3.6 billion by 2004.

Force10 was founded in May 1999 and has raised more than $70 million in two rounds of funding from New Enterprise Associates, U.S. Venture Partners, and WorldView Technology Partners.

The company could not be reached for comment.

-- Phil Harvey, Light Reading http://www.lightreading.com