ATM looks for niche in LAN/WAN market
By Stephen Lawson
InfoWorld Electric
infoworld.com
Posted at 5:30 PM PT, May 31, 1998
Asynchronous Transfer Mode, once considered the key to communicating
across all networks, is expected to continue playing a role, albeit
diminished, in LANs and WANs despite the increasing popularity of
powerful and intelligent IP devices.
However, many enterprises and service providers are looking to Gigabit
Ethernet, optical networks, and emerging IP quality of service as
alternatives to ATM's traditional strengths.
"In the long term, we're interested in alternatives to ATM because we
pay a significant overhead penalty for carrying ATM," said Vinton Cerf,
senior vice president of MCI. "I'm quite convinced that we can implement
similar functionality in other than ATM switches."
MCI is planning to test Lucent's PacketStar IP Switch, introduced last
week, as a possible solution. The Layer3/Layer 4 switch, which promises
to route as many as 32 million packets per second, is among the first of
what is expected to be a series of such large IP WAN devices.
Despite this, vendors will use this week's ATM Year 98 conference in San
Jose, Calif., to roll out next-generation products that will extend the
capabilities of ATM. And observers said that for the foreseeable future,
ATM will continue to be critical.
"If you're a service provider and you have to handle both IP and other
traffic, ATM is the best solution," said Ron Jeffries, principal analyst
at Jeffries Research, in Arroyo Grande, Calif. Because ATM can
transparently carry non-IP traffic, many service providers that turn to
pure IP will maintain parallel ATM networks, he said.
But IP and Ethernet are unlikely to match ATM's capability to carry
voice, video, and data, another analyst predicted.
"You'll be able to do 90 percent of what an ATM network delivers, but
it'll never be as good as ATM on multimedia," said Michael Howard,
president of Infonetics, in San Jose.
"ATM is here for the long run, but it won't be the overall winner
anywhere," Howard said.
One technology analyst said his company uses ATM for WAN services in
some cases but not in LANs.
"We don't feel ATM inside the building is worth the expense," said Eric
Kuzmack, a senior analyst at a Fortune 250 publishing company.
A consortium of automotive companies recently set down parameters for
determining whether ISPs can deliver the quality of service needed for
high-availability and multiservice networks. The Automotive Industry
Action Group is using the parameters to certify service providers that
want to participate in its Automotive Network Exchange.
At ATM Year 98, Cabletron will introduce the SmartSwitch 9500 as the
first shipping product of a strategy to supply ATM hardware from the
desktop to the carrier core.
The 9500 finally brings to the SmartSwitch 9000, formerly the MMAC-Plus,
the long-awaited Cell Transfer Matrix (CTM) ATM backplane. Cabletron
said the passive backplane's throughput can scale beyond 75Gbps.
The switch can be fitted with ATM modules that each include a 4.5Gbps
switching fabric. Interfaces, available separately to plug in to the
modules, include DS-3, OC-3, and OC-12. Officials said Cabletron will
ship OC-48 interfaces for the modules in July.
Each 9500 will ship with both the CTM and a packet-based backplane,
allowing enterprises to mix Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, and ATM on the
same switch. The CTM can also be added to an existing MMAC-Plus or
SmartSwitch 9000.
The 9500 is available now, priced at $9,995 for a 14-slot chassis.
Modules will cost about $19,000.
General DataComm will enhance the voice-carrying capabilities of its
Apex ATM switches. The carrier backbone switches will be able to
compress a 64Kbps voice channel to 8Kbps using a standard ATM
technology, AAL2.
The higher compression ratio will allow service providers to carry voice
traffic more efficiently, potentially lowering the cost to customers of
leased connections across a WAN.
Other companies offer 8Kbps compression capability today on their
switches but only using a nonstandard method, according to industry
observers.
HyNex will announce it is adding voice support to its Hunt 7100 ATM
Network Termination Unit, an ATM access device for customer sites that
includes traffic shaping and WAN priority settings. The Hunt 7100 is
designed for service providers to offer and bill for end-to-end quality
of service.
Cabletron Systems Inc., in Rochester, N.H., can be reached at (603)
332-9400 or cabletron.com. General DataComm Inc., in
Middlebury, Conn., can be reached at (203) 574-1118 or
gdc.com. HyNex Ltd., in Shefayim, Israel, is at
hynex.com.
Stephen Lawson is a senior writer for InfoWorld.
en
Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net |
