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Strategies & Market Trends : The Thread Formerly Known as No Rest For The Wicked -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Captain Jack who wrote (62679)	9/26/1999 3:35:00 PM
From: Ellen	Respond to of 90042

redherring.com A NETWORKING ROAD MAP The Herring's guide to the major technologies. A NETWORKING ROAD MAP The Herring's guide to the major technologies. By Luc Hatlestad The Red Herring magazine March 1998 If you're confused by networking technology, you've good reason to be. This stuff is difficult. And various. There are different networking technologies at every level of an organization, connecting a company to its telephone carrier and linking each and every desktop. All the techno-logies are useful, but none is a cure-all. As a result, the average network looks like a spaghetti bowl of cables and wires. Though the accompanying guide is by no means comprehensive (and only somewhat scientific), we hope it helps clear up some of the confusion. ISDN, T1, T3, ADSL These telephony technologies got their start in the enterprise but are finding their way into remote offices and homes as PC devotees demand the higher-bandwidth connections they are accustomed to at work. As with all nontraditional telephony technologies, these hookups often cost more than the average consumer is willing to pay. But as prices slowly come down and faster modems become available, the day is in sight when we'll look laughingly at the idea of connecting a PC over a plain old telephone system. WHO'S DOING IT The Big Four (Cisco Systems, 3Com, Bay Networks, and Cabletron) and the telcos. Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, frame relay, token ring, FDDI These are the mainstays, the DOSs of connectivity protocols. They have been around for years and probably will still be connecting a handful of desktops and the occasional LAN or WAN backbone decades from now. The most noteworthy developments lately have been in Fast Ethernet, which has improved as the Internet has spurred demand among corporate and remote users for faster connections. WHO'S DOING IT The Big Four. ATM About three years ago, Asynchronous Transfer Mode was being hailed as the networking technology that would solve all future bandwidth problems, from the telco to the desktop. But while ATM will have a considerable presence in future networks, it's far from the comprehensive technology everyone thought it would be. (In particular, ATM to the desktop spawned a wave of startup activity that quickly went the way of the nickelodeon.) Where ATM will continue to matter is as a backbone link on WANs, hooking up LANs to each other and to an organization's ISP or telephone carrier. WHO'S DOING IT The Big Four, Fore Systems, and Ascend Communications. IP over SONet Expect this protocol to succeed Gigabit Ethernet as the networking technology of the moment in 1998. The debate here is whether to map IP packets directly onto Synchronous Optical Network (SONet) systems or to map the signals to ATM first. Proponents of the former cite ATM's "cell tax," in which 10 percent of each packet's bandwidth is devoted to overhead information, as a reason that direct IP over SONet is more efficient. Detractors say IP can't match ATM for reliability. Either way, as voice and data networks become increasingly integrated, IP is expected to play a major role in WAN connectivity. WHO'S DOING IT The Big Four and the telcos. Gigabit Ethernet In 1996 and 1997 this was the most fashionable networking technology. Today, the Gigabit Ethernet market is heading for a major shakeout. "Gigabit Ethernet has the same problem as ATM: it was a good idea that was hyped way beyond any reasonable expectation," says Tom Nolle, president of the consultancy CIMI. The technology emerged partly as a reaction to a struggling ATM. With Ethernet and Fast Ethernet already firmly entrenched at the desktop, a gigabit version seemed like a logical fit for the backbone. However, performance and standardization problems have doomed it as a complete solution for bandwidth problems. It now appears destined for the LAN backbone. This is nothing to sniff at, but the market isn't big enough to sustain so many startups. WHO'S DOING IT The Big Four, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Alteon Networks, and legions of other startups.