5/98 tele.com on intelligent vs. dumb networks
teledotcom.com
No Wrong Answers--Yet
By Dawn Bushaus, Internet Editor
It's easy to get network planners to offer their visions of the
next public network. The tough part comes when you try to
reconcile those visions to create a clear view of the public
network of tomorrow. Here are some of the key philosophical
questions that service providers and their suppliers are now
grappling with, along with some not-always-compatible
answers.
Should the network be intelligent, or should it just deliver fast,
dumb pipes?
* "The middle of the network should be as stone-cold stupid
as possible." --David Isenberg, consultant (Isen.com,
Westfield, N.J.) and former AT&T scientist
* "We're not looking to build a big, dumb network. We want to build one that's big and smart." --Ron Vidal, senior vice president of new ventures, Level 3 Communications Inc. (Omaha, Neb.)
* "The intelligence will be distributed." --C. Holland Taylor, CEO, USA Global Link Inc. (Fairfield, Iowa)
* "Ten to 20 years from now, there may be enough intelligence in the end points, but that's not the case today." --Mark
Wilson, director of strategic planning, Ericsson Inc. (Research
Triangle Park, N.C.)
* "I like the idea of a stupid network rather than an intelligent network." --Junichi Kishigami, vice president of technology and general manager at NTT America Inc. (New York)
Is IP switching or ATM better as a core technology?
* "We are working to build a fast, scalable, fail-safe ATM core." --Mike Grubbs, director of enterprise services, Sprint Corp.
* "IP goes everywhere. ATM doesn't." --Fred Baker,
chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force and fellow at Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.)
* "IP on Sonet [Synchronous Optical Network] just isn't quite there yet." --Ron Vidal, Level 3
* "ATM gives me the tool to allocate bandwidth. I can't
segregate traffic today with IP." --Andrew Schmidt, product manager, Ameritech Corp.
* "We're agnostic. We'll be working with both technologies over the next couple years." --Jack Walters, vice president of network systems engineering, MCI Communications Corp.
Will carriers continue to accelerate the pace to deploy
packet-based architectures if IP telephony is regulated?
* "If there is regulation to slow IP telephony's momentum, the monopoly carriers will have a safe harbor. They will slow down their efforts." --Tom Evslin, chairman and CEO, ITXC Corp. (North Brunswick, N.J.)
* "We've been working toward a cell and packet
infrastructure that will support all real-time applications for the past five years. Voice over IP isn't really driving this." --Mike Grubbs, Sprint
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