MCI WorldCom's frame net face lift
By Denise Pappalardo, Tim Greene
and David Rohde
Network World, 11/09/98
If you are an MCI WorldCom
frame relay customer, brace
yourself for what could amount
to a monumental change.
MCI WorldCom is close to
signing a $50 million deal with
Ascend Communications for
nearly 70 Ascend CBX 500
switches that will be used to
give MCI's 100,000-port
HyperStream frame relay
network a face lift.
While neither MCI WorldCom nor
Ascend would officially comment
on the deal, sources say the
carrier will be adding the Ascend
gear in the frame relay
backbone. Until now, the
backbone has been primarily
based on Bay Net-works'
BayStream devices.
Nortel Networks, which acquired
Bay a few months ago, has
confirmed it will discontinue
production of the BayStream
line, which is based on Bay's
Backbone Concentrator Node
routers. Regardless, MCI
WorldCom will continue to work
with Bay on its frame relay
network, a spokeswoman says.
Carl Baptiste, Nortel's router
platform product line manager,
says the company will still
support existing BayStream
customers - which include Bell
Canada and Concert - but Nortel
Passport is the company's
carrier data platform of choice.
The Bay products will be used as
edge devices on large enterprise
networks.
Some experts believe the
Ascend contract was in the
works prior to WorldCom's
acquisition of MCI and Nortel's
acquisition of Bay. But whether
the deal was born out of
necessity or desire, users and
analysts agree the change can
be positive, if done correctly.
Ascend's ability to extend
service-quality guarantees from
its ATM backbone to the frame
relay services supported by the
CBX 500 may mean more
service-quality options,
according to MCI WorldCom
customer Ken Lund, network
manager for Allen Lund
transportation brokers in La
Canada, Calif.
"This shows a commitment to
using frame relay in conjunction
with ATM to improve the quality
of frame," Lund says. The MCI
WorldCom frame relay service
Lund has been using for four
years has performed well, and he
even uses it to support voice, he
says.
MCI WorldCom hasn't been
lagging behind with its frame
relay offerings. In fact, MCI
WorldCom was the first and only
carrier to offer switched virtual
circuits. But users and analysts
agree that a switching platform,
not a routing platform, will offer
more flexibility and reliability.
Ascend's CBX 500 will give MCI
WorldCom the option to do ATM
trunking while continuing to
offer frame relay. "The company
will get more robust quality of
service from the CBX 500 portion
of the network, and the voice
capabilities of that platform are
a lot stronger than the Bay
platform," says Tim Smith,
principal WAN analyst at
Dataquest.
For Bruce Friedman, network
manager at Morrison and
Forrester, a law firm in Palo Alto,
Calif., the possibility of moving
to Ascend is attractive.
Potentially, MCI World-Com could
offer service-level guarantees
that would allow the law firm to
do more than the current voice
and data over frame relay.
"The next thing you would want
to say is, 'Can I do video?' I can
see that being intriguing,"
Friedman says. He had toyed
with using ATM to handle
multimedia traffic, but says if it
could all be done over frame
relay, he would jump at it.
One customer concern when a
carrier attempts such a
wholesale upgrade is billing.
"Customers will have to watch
and make sure they are getting
the same service levels they
were getting before," says Rick
Malone, a principal at the
Dedham, Mass., consulting firm
Vertical Systems Group.
"Because frames move through
the network differently if you're
using Bay, Ascend or Cisco,
users really have to keep an eye
on billing," he says.
Swapping out old equipment or
supplementing a legacy data
network is not an easy task, but
it can be done. Just ask AT&T
and Sprint.
In mid-1996, AT&T upgraded its
backbone from Cisco's
first-generation StrataCom IPX
frame relay switches to
broadband StrataCom BPX
switches to support interoffice
trunking at T-3 rather than T-1
speeds via ATM.
AT&T decided to bite the bullet
and move all its customers' ports
to the BPX switches. But to
ensure no customer traffic got
lost in the shuffle, for two weeks
AT&T duplicated every packet
and ran two networks. Doing
that provided the BPX with a
real, production-level stress test
for each customer's WAN.
"AT&T had some scheduling
issues, but everybody came out
whole in the end," Malone says.
By contrast, when Sprint last
year installed new Nortel frame
relay/ATM switches, the
company created a parallel
network next to its original
Alcatel Data Networks backbone
and made customer migration
optional.
The main advantage of Sprint's
Nortel network is that it provides
class-of-service differentiation,
which lets the carrier offer lower
latency guarantees for SNA
traffic. This capability is not
available to customers that are
on Sprint's legacy Alcatel frame
relay network.
All new customers get Nortel
ports, and some 75 existing
customers chose migration to
better their guaranteed service
levels, says Brad Hokamp,
Sprint's director of advanced
data services.
But the key reason Sprint was
able to keep two networks going
is that Alcatel agreed to
maintain and upgrade the older
Sprint network.
MCI WorldCom may follow
Sprint's model because Nortel is
saying it will continue support of
its BayStream product line.
While new BayStream frame
relay switches will not be
available to customers, Nortel
will support existing BayStream
users for at least five years and
longer in some cases, says Mark
Tharby, vice president of product
marketing at Nortel.
Contact Senior
Editors Denise
Pappalardo, Tim
Greene and David
Rohde
CBX overview from
Ascend
GTE builds new 'Net
backbone
Using Ascend CBX
switches. Network
World, 4/20/98.
AT&T hikes prices
of popular frame
relay speeds
Network World,
11/9/98.
Frame relay outage
costs AT&T a
customer
Network World,
11/9/98.
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