Hi Rupert,
Thank you for the heads up on the ANSI meetings. I am in complete agreement with you- they need to move on.
I have been thinking about Alcatel's integrated ATM/ADSL solution. I am wondering if it is not an idea ahead of its time for the following reasons:
1. Cost: I would think it would be consideredably more expensive than an Ethernet/ADSL solution.
2. Complexity: While I do not know much about ATM, I would imagine all devices connected at the home would need some sort of ATM addressing/config info. I personally don't know many LAN admins that could do that, let alone a Bell employee or God forbid a consumer. Moreover, the last time I checked (about a year ago) the ATM forum was still arguing over AAL 4/5, LAN emulation etc. Ethernet, while not understood by most consumer is an order of magnitude less complicated. (even to the SW folks that need to write to its APIs)
3. Finally, I have to think early ADSL users will surf the net (which) is not terribly delay sensitive. I think if ADSL is popular ProShare will catch on and we could see some video conferencing. While video is quite delay sensitive, I would expect performance over ADSL to be better than an ISDN BRI line. ATM cell's ~10% overhead is probably not optimal at these low speeds.
4 VDSL: With the speeds this should offer, ATM will, I think, be a requirement. Hopefully, all its implementation issues will by then be more widely understood.
What do you think?
Daniel |
