I thought Early Edition came on Saturday nights?
Just what kind of cat do you own Pat?
If you have AOL, you can access the next day's edition the evening before, usually after 9:00 p.m., PDT. This time I saw the article posted on ASND and brought it here.
Incidentally, the IBD is a great source of information when you're just starting to research a company. Just run a subject search and if they've written anything, it's there.
To give you an idea of what you might find doing a Newbridge search, here's an article from November '97. I've highlighted the NN part.
Later --
Pat
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In '96, Bakersfield College began to consider offering online courses in full-motion video.
That would give students - and the college - more flexibility, says Carey Allen, the Bakersfield, Calif., school's director of instructional technical services. Students could use PCs in the school library to view taped lectures and class sessions at their convenience. Eventually, they could view from home.
But video required that the college upgrade its technology. It already had a network linking some 1,300 students, faculty and staff in three locations. But the network used an older technology called Token Ring.
Allen knew he needed more bandwidth - capacity to send data through the network. But he also was interested in something that caught his ear -quality of service. QOS refers to a special software capability found in some newer network equipment.
Bandwidth and QOS are becoming more important as more users strive to send video and audio over their networks, not just text and graphics.
The word on QOS is getting out. ''Our QOS features are the reason that 70% of our customers select our products,'' stated Houman Modarres, the director of ATM product management at Canada's Newbridge Networks Corp., a network equipment supplier.
ATM, or asynchronous transfer mode, is a newer networking technology that can transmit data, video and audio at the same time. It was designed to support QOS. Because most networking firms now offer ATM, they can provide QOS. But the older standard networks, Token Ring and Ethernet, aren't yet able to offer QOS. They emerged before networks had to carry video and voice traffic.
To understand the benefits of QOS, examine how information flows on local-area networks. Data, transmitted in packets, usually travels across LANs randomly. The network equipment at the receiving end reshuffles the packets so the information is presented correctly to the computer.
Packet arrival order isn't noticeable with most text and graphics applications. But with video or voice transmissions, packets arriving in an improper sequence can fluctuate pictures and garble words.
Also, video and audio can't tolerate many fluctuations. Two video transmissions on the typical bandwidth can jar or break transmission completely.
QOS is designed to eliminate such problems. This software feature is found in LAN switches that split network transmissions into smaller groupings. It assures that multiple transmissions have sufficient bandwidth.
''Many organizations now are interested in QOS,'' said David Passmore, a principal at Sterling, Va., consulting firm Decisis Inc.
Passmore says that only a few networks now use QOS, though more will. Witness Bakersfield College.
The college examined ATM equipment with QOS from International Business Machines Corp., Bay Networks Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., and the San Jose, Calif., unit of the Netherlands' Madge NV. It chose IBM largely because it already used some IBM equipment and had a good relationship with the firm.
At the end of '96, the college tested IBM's 8260 ATM switch with a new server to handle video. The server sent video to 15 PCs in the school library. The tests succeeded. Now, the college plans to expand the network to support more video applications.
In addition to video, users need computers to handle more audio applications. Built- in microphones and sound boards let computers use more audio.
With voice and video becoming more popular, network equipment firms are adding QOS to their products.
''Vendors are now in their own arms race and moving swiftly to ensure their products include QOS features,'' said Passmore.
ATM's still the only QOS option, though that likely will change. The reason is that many organizations have tens of thousands of dollars invested in Token Ring and Ethernet networks. Converting to ATM isn't a viable option for many.
Last year, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - an ad hoc standards group that helps guide the Internet's evolution - began working on the Resource Reservation Protocol. RSVP adds QOS service to existing Token Ring and Ethernet networks. A protocol is a way of packaging information and sending it through a network.
RSVP support has been growing. Leading networking equipment suppliers Bay, Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., and 3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif., have been adding RSVP. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. plans to incorporate RSVP in its Window NT 5.0 operating system.
But it's still unclear how well RSVP operates. RSVP may add a lot of overhead to Token Ring and Ethernet networks. That could decrease network performance. And RSVP doesn't yet offer as many features as ATM.
So customers like Bakersfield College are taking the plunge by converting to ATM. The college wants videoconferencing in '98. It's another example of how the college plans to exploit video. Allen doesn't know whether it will select ATM or RSVP-equipped gear for that application. But he is certain the university will select products with QOS.
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