It was probably an ASND upgrade, but there could have been some compatibility issues with some of the older CSCC equipment. IBM Global Network (now AT&T) had similar problems last year. Here's some good news;
Bandwidth Gap Will Continue
by George Leopold (07/29/99, 8:24 p.m. ET)
EE Times
Demand for bandwidth to provide
emerging services such as voice- and
video-over-IP is outpacing supply by a
growing margin, a
telecommunications-industry study
says.
In a survey of more than 50 companies,
Multimedia Research Group, in
Sunnyvale, Calif., found the so-called
"bandwidth problem" is likely to persist even as large telecom
companies such as AT&T and MCI WorldCom upgrade their
telephone and cable-TV network capacity.
"The bad news is the bandwidth demand continues to grow by
some estimates at least three times as fast as supply," the report
says.
It also looked at how advances in server technology with the
release of the Pentium III chip will impact the bandwidth gap. Either
way, said Gary Schultz, Multimedia Research president, there is
"no way to provide enough servers at a central location" to satisfy
demand.
Growing demand is nevertheless expected to be a boon to server
and router suppliers. Increased demand for digital media to homes
and small offices is also seen driving the market for DSL and
cable-modem services over the next three years.
The two technologies are expected to compete "neck-and-neck,"
with DSL gaining a slight edge by 2002. Local exchange carriers
are already offering competitive DSL services, and those services
are expected to take off beginning next year, the study found.
Elsewhere, the survey estimated the global server market for video
and media applications should nearly double in size by 2000 to
$1.1 billion. Leading the demand will be audio applications such as
MP3 and other digital-music codecs, video streaming and
downloading, as well as Java applications.
Hollywood's Secure Digital Music
Initiative could provide a second wave of
demand if the encryption plan takes off.
Still, the study says Hollywood must be
careful not to repeat in the digital audio
market its Divx encryption scheme for
video. The DVD content-protection
scheme was shelved by promoters after
it failed in the marketplace.
While home and small-office markets will boost demand for digital
audio and video, the study says "corporate intranet applications will
be a major driver of market growth," with heavy investments in
VPNs and compatible streaming media applications.
"IBM, Lotus, and RealNetworks, for example, are betting this will be
very big," the study says. "Microsoft and some of its corporate
alliances -- including Cisco -- also [are] betting big on the
importance of streaming media."
Overall, the study's authors conceded, forecasting the growth of the
streaming media market is "unpredictable," much like Internet
growth over the past several years. What is predictable is
bandwidth demand will continue to grow as more companies seek
to provide streaming audio and video, Schultz said.
- EE Times |
