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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND)

ASND 212.55

+1.2%

Nov 28 12:59 PM EST

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To: Jack Whitley who wrote (40530)	3/23/1998 2:34:00 AM
From: bucky89	Read Replies (2) of 61433

Jack, In the OSI networking model, ATM is a technology for layer 2 (data link layer) while "routing" refers to layer 3 (network layer) protocols for transmissions between computers. The most popular routing protocol today is IP (Internet Protocol). Layer 2 technologies are used to manage communication on the physical circuits themselves, and these are typically switched and very fast. ATM is a switching technology. Layer 3 technologies involve a lot of processing and network address lookups which can take a lot of time and overhead. The extra processing required often causes congestion for the router when it gets hit by too many packets at the same time. Ascend's "smart" ATM switches use a new pre-standard method called MPLS (something something Label Switching--I forget the exact acronym). Cisco's competing proprietary technology is call "Tag Switching", which operates on a very similar principal, but is proprietary. I believe the ITU is behind a movement to make MPLS industry-standard. The specifics of this technology are quite detailed, but in a nutshell it allows Ascend's ATM switches to read IP packets (layer 3) and switch them using layer 2 ATM technology. This significantly speeds up data flow, and because ATM is a connection-oriented technology, there will not be congestion at any intermediate nodes. Since Quality of Service was specifically designed into ATM by the standards forum, it also allows the carriers to assign higher priority to certain traffic by paying customers. Because MPLS is still pre-standard, this requires all switches within the ATM cloud to be Ascend, that is if MPLS is to be turned on. Hope this helps. Bucky89

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