endors Add Heft To DSL Offerings
By Salvatore Salamone
IT managers looking for business-class digital subscriber line services got
another service option and a glimpse of things to come last week.
Ascend Communications Inc., Paradyne and WaiLAN Communications Inc.
unveiled DSL products aimed at improving bandwidth delivery. And Uunet
Technologies Inc. introduced a new DSL service.
The announcements by the equipment companies are expressly aimed at
LAN users in small- to medium-sized offices.
"Most business applications require some form of end-to-end traffic control,"
said William Jacobson, a broadband consultant at Internet consulting
company Pinnacle Research Inc. "That's not something that's been addressed
much in the DSL world."
To that end, Paradyne announced it is adding Layer 2 virtual LAN (VLAN)
support to its Hotwire line of rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) products. Layer 2
support brings several benefits to carriers and end users.
For carriers, Layer 2 support simplifies central office operations. According
to industry experts, many carriers do not typically support Layer 3 routing in
their central offices, and for some applications this has forced them to handle
IP addressing within the central office. The Layer 2 approach requires only
one IP address to manage a DSL access multiplexer and its attached
modems.
Paradyne's Layer 2 support includes a learning bridge that automatically maps
a Media Access Control address to the appropriate RADSL line. This
feature provides a layer of security that is lacking in many DSL
implementations. Since data is sent only to a user's RADSL line, others
sharing a DSL access multiplexer do not have access to that data.
Layer 2 support also is in Ascend's plans. Last week, the company
announced that its DSLTNT central office concentrators now support Layer
2 multiplexing using frame relay over xDSL. Layer 2 multiplexing will let
service providers offer multiprotocol DSL transport for services like virtual
private networking without forcing carriers to deal with IP addresses in their
central offices.
Also last week, WaiLAN unveiled WaiDSL, which will serve as the basis for
a line of LAN connectivity products that support symmetrical transmissions at
7 Mbps.
Uunet last week announced Preferred Access 768, a symmetrical DSL
service that builds on its existing Preferred 128 service.
The service gives users 768-Kbps transmission rates to and from a Uunet
point of presence (POP). The service is available now in New York City and
Silicon Valley, and will be rolled out to 54 POPs this spring. Essentially, "it
will be available up and down the East and West Coasts," said Alan Taffel,
vice president of marketing and business development at Uunet.
Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc. |
