Hi Ken, good to hear from you. You start the post
with "Ascend vs Cisco ."
I see we're off to a good start...
>>>Who do you think will win the bulk of the carrier
business -ASND or CSCO? <<<
Which carrier business is that? I don't mean to sound
flip about it, but there are many subdivisions
of carrier business. Take, for example, what QWST is
doing.
They are building two independent OC-48
backbones: <!?>
BB #1 - IP based on Cisco's 7x00 & 12000 Routers, and
BB#2 - ATM/FR based on ASND's 500s and 550s.
I found this a little strange, since they made it clear
that these were parallel but 'independent" of one
another, but they must have had their reasons. I can
only imagine what they would be.
>>>It seems as though Cisco is pushing SONET over
IP whereas ASND is betting on ATM. <<<
Cisco is by no means alone in this, although they are
the best at getting the word out, as usual. BAY and
COMS are aligned with one of the Dense WDM optical
vendors, and I think an IXC as well, in a similar
exercise. IP over SONET is going to become a
rite of passage for any router vendor who has not
already ventured into it already. ASND's exploits and
less-than-stellar performance resulting from their
NetStar acquisition (which was morphed into the
GRF platform) in the router domain... were not as
successful as their acquisition results with Cascade's
platforms. They're sticking with what has worked for
them. It could have been the other way around. So
much for philosophical persuasions.
>>>I did a little reading in a book published by Que
entitled Maximum Bandwidth. The author, Dan
Blacharski, seems to favor ATM but he admits it
would be more expensive to extend ATM to the
desktop because of the need to replace
legacy hardware..<<<
Would you happen to have the ISBN # and other
publishing information on that book handy? I'd
appreciate your forwarding it to me, thanks.
>>> So it seems as though ATM will be the preferred
protocol for the core layer and IP will dominate the
edge layer - at least for the time being. Am I
correct?<<<
I don't think that this is a matter of being correct or
not, since this could be true for certain requirements
sets, or it could be just the opposite for different
applications whose logical and physical geographics
derive from different circumstances. The biggest
obstacle to overcome in these kinds of discussions is
recognizing the fact that these two protocols needn't
be mutually exclusive. They often work together,
with IP attributes being mapped to ATM, and vice
versa. More importantly, each has sufficient
shortcomings and strengths, as evidenced by how
each (through the IETF and the ATM Forum) is
striving to emulate the strengths of the other, and
indeed, the IETF with the Forum are working on integrated
services (IntServ) drafts and RFCs to meld the better
qualities of each, together as one, for certain
applications. The differences that cause dissension
and strife on this topic are largely blind religious
ones, and vested interests of either labor or finance,
or both, and not derived from the objective
application of network engineering principles.
>>> It seems as though ASND will get most of the
core switching market and CSCO will continue
todominate the enterprise networks and BAY will
continue to be a niche player in gigabit Ethernet. <<<
I don't think so. What resides in the core today in the
form of switched ATM, or Frame, or whatever, may be
displaced in large part by native TCP/IP over
SONET in the future, and a large portion of the edge
and the enterprise access platforms may go the way
of ATM. Again, it's a matter of distribution and
administration of same. Running the numbers on an
individual case basis will often reveal what the most
efficient solution is. Unless, of course, there are
overriding orders from _above._
>>>DoI have it right? <<<
I don't know, Ken... You tell me! <smile>
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
