OT> Radical changes in store with Internet2
October 20, 1998 ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES via
NewsEdge Corporation : The move to "
GigaPOP" architectures for Internet2 will
require a sea change in router and switch
design, and the needs of Internet
service-providers (ISPs) will drive OEM design
teams. That was the conclusion at the
recent Internet2 Services Conference, where
Michael Howard, principal analyst of
Infonetics Research, said that Internet
services will be defined by true
quality-of-service (QoS) parameters and
full-featured service-level agreements
guaranteeing Internet Protocol session
characteristics end to end.
The conference, sponsored by super-router
OEM Torrent Networking Technologies Inc.,
pulled together ISPs as well as alternative
carriers, to talk about common network
designs spanning all layers of the Open
Systems Interconnect protocol stack.
ISPs will have to differentiate themselves on
factors such as multiple tiers of QoS, virtual
private-network functions, security protocols
and IP multicast, Howard said. Those
expecting the new version of IP, IPv6, to
solve user problems must realize there are
few compelling reasons for ISPs to turn to
IPv6, Howard said, and practical rollouts of
the expanded protocol may not happen until
2002 or later.
An infrastructure based on dense
wave-division multiplexing over Sonet fiber
pipes provides the baseline for allowing QoS,
said Matthew Bross, chief technology officer
at Williams Communications (Tulsa, Okla.).
The company's subsidiary, Williams Network,
is building a 32,000-mile OC-192 nationwide
backbone. Bross said the telecom
infrastructure is "rapidly deconstructing,
based on disruptive technology advances at
the optical layer, the electrical layer, the
ATM layer and the IP layer."
Larry Flournoy, co-manager of the Internet2
Texas GigaPOP in Houston, has seen the
practical effect of interconnecting users
through DS-3 lines. "It is not unusual for our
players to want to move 2 Tbytes of data at
a time," he said. "Reliable service cannot be
guaranteed by bandwidth alone. There must
be a solution for QoS for the next generation
of backbone."
Copyright c 1998 CMP Media Inc.
By Loring Wirbel
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