techweb.com
Frame Relay Holds Its Own Over ATM
(07/06/98; 1:38 p.m. ET)
By John T. Mulqueen, InternetWeek
Two banks on opposite coasts and competing in different financial
markets share one view as they overhaul their networks: ATM is not yet
up to snuff.
San Francisco-based California Federal Bank (Cal Fed) and Sumitomo Bank
Capital Markets in New York are each engaged in LAN and WAN projects
that rely heavily on frame relay.
Cal Fed, which is replacing a point-to-point systems network
architecture (SNA) network with frame relay, is considering ATM, but
only in the distant future.
"We are looking at ATM for the future, but the major carriers are not
ready for prime time" with the required infrastructure -- namely,
written procedures, documentation, and ongoing testing to compete with
frame relay, said Thomas Nanomantube, Cal Fed's senior vice president of
information and technology services.
Sumitomo has a frame relay network from Concert Communications that
connects its New York office to branches in London, Hong Kong, and
Tokyo. Someday, that network will migrate to ATM, but not soon.
"Public ATM networks are still in their infancy and remind me of where
frame relay was five years ago," said Rob McKenna, vice president of
global network engineering at Sumitomo. "There is no quality of service,
and you don't know what the response time and reliability is. Big
carriers have the services, but they are more like pilots."
Voice calls have become so inexpensive that it is not economical to put
in an ATM network just so voice can be combined with data, he said. And
the standards for handling voice over ATM are not set, he added.
"Ideally, once ATM matures and they get some compression and work out
something to [support] voice more cost effectively, then we will see a
seamless LAN to ATM to WAN and back," McKenna said.
Cal Fed is migrating from SNA to frame relay to increase communication
links to branch offices and to ease the acquisition of Glendale Federal
Bank. Two Glendale data centers are being consolidated into Cal Fed's
data center in Sacramento at a $30 million annual savings, Nanomantube
said.
The network upgrade will increase response time to branches, lay the
infrastructure for handling more acquisitions, make it possible to roll
out Internet services for customers, and create a foundation for an
intranet.
Within some 400 branches, Cal Fed is replacing token ring LANs with
Ethernet networks running off Cisco 10/100 Catalyst 2924 switches. WAN
connections will be through Cisco 2524 routers. MCI is supplying
56-kilobit-per-second frame relay links to the branches and T1 or T3
lines into data centers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Ideally, once ATM matures and they get some compression and work out
something to [support] voice more cost effectively, then we will see a
seamless LAN to ATM to WAN and back.'
-- Rob McKenna
Sumitomo
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The network was not meeting our business requirements because of
response delays to the branches," said Nanomantube. "We wanted to
[Web-enable] the branches and allow them to do that without impacting
response times."
In addition, the network connects its headquarters in San Francisco to
loan and mortgage offices in Maryland and Texas. The network will have
400 routers and 600 switches in the branch offices, and 20 additional
routers and about 100 switches in other offices around the country.
Most of the bank's traffic is from typical financial transactions such
as credit verifications. ATM machines are on the LANs, but have their
own WAN connections. Nanomantube said ATM traffic will be wrapped in
Synchronous Data Link Control protocol and shipped across the WAN in IP
packets. Legacy SNA traffic will run under Novell's Internetwork Packet
Exchange protocol in an IP packet on the frame relay network.
Nanomantube is on a tight schedule. In any given week, 20 to 30 branches
are being cut over; all 400 are supposed to be completed by early next
year.
Cal Fed will roll out Internet banking services next year. That may
include processing of auto loans and consumer mortgages. The website
today is used for informational purposes only. "We have got the frame
relay network now and can move [ahead]," Nanomantube said.
In New York, Sumitomo's overhaul will build the network infrastructure
for the next three to five years and let network managers tailor
bandwidth to the most important application and business needs, said
McKenna.
Sumitomo is installing 3Com SuperStack II Switch 1100s as well as 3300s
and 3500s that connect to 3Com CoreBuilder 5000s. The bank has 18 of the
5000s, but is replacing some of them with 30 of the less expensive
stackable switches, McKenna said.
The switches also replace costly Cisco 7000 routers, which will be moved
to the network edge to handle frame relay connections. The 7000 is an
old router, and newer models would have cost twice as much as the
stackable switches, McKenna said.
Still, he will use new smaller Cisco routers -- probably 4500s -- for
the frame relay WAN connections because they are more robust than
3Com's, he said.
"We are looking at ordering CoreBuilder 9000s later this year for more
port density," he said. "We will probably get two of those and put them
in the first quarter of 1999."
McKenna said the stackable switches are 802.1pq-compliant and will lay
the foundation for intelligent network and quality-of-service
guarantees. "We will be able to tailor our traffic flow to applications
that are most important to the business, and, ultimately, flagging
priority traffic," he said. |
