Future of the Net
BY BOB BREWIN AND JAMES COPE
(December 11, 2000) Global corporate
networks might be turning the planet into a
very small business world, but if they're
going to live up to the demands of the next
generation of Internet applications, they're
going to have to make a quantum leap in
capacity.
Demand for wideband networks to support
applications such as enterprise resource
planning (ERP) systems, digital video and
the global transfer of "fat" files such as
engineering and design data will overwhelm
those that don't evolve rapidly over the
next several years, according to company
network managers, analysts and
telecommunications providers.
The growing demand for bandwidth is also driven by the transition
of the corporate network from an in-house utility to a primary tool
for communication with suppliers and customers via portals, the
Internet and intranets.
The need for access to just-in-time information as a competitive
tool also seems likely to drive deployment of wireless networks
everywhere, from the factory floor to the delivery truck.
General Motors Corp., for example,
anticipates that high-bandwidth functions,
such as the exchange of engineering data
over corporate intranets, could easily drive
the capacity of portions of the global
network backbone from 1G bit/sec. to 10G
bit/sec. over the next two to three years.
At the other end of the spectrum, the
Detroit-based automaker says it believes
there is a huge potential for the use of
much lower-bandwidth wireless networks
on the floors of its factories to track the
flow of parts and car and truck modules
through its assembly plants, according to
Arvind Sabharwal, the company's director
of telecommunications and networks.
Delphi Automotive Systems Corp. in Troy,
Mich., spun off as an independent company
by GM last year, has started deploying a
multimegabit global backbone to the 40
countries in which it operates. One of its
challenges during the next two to three
years will be to figure out how to hook
rapidly proliferating handheld devices, such
as personal digital assistants from Santa
Clara, Calif.-based Palm Inc., into that
network in a coherent and secure fashion,
according to Gary Roberts, Delphi's chief
technology officer.
Fat Wireless Nets
Memphis-based FedEx Corp. will continue
to operate a much slimmer backbone
network than GM - relying on multiple T1
(1.54M bit/sec.) or T3 networks in the U.S.
and abroad. However, the company is
already planning to develop higher-speed
wireless wide-area networks that can
support a new generation of handheld units
for couriers that have charge-coupled
devices (CCD) - built-in digital cameras on
a chip - to take pictures of airbills and the
shipments themselves, according to Jimmy
Burke, vice president of network computing
at FedEx.
Burke adds that FedEx plans to use CCD
systems to speed up customs paperwork
for the company and its customers, an
application he called "critical . . . as more
and more of our volume goes international."
Sabharwal says he sees wireless
technologies, both LANs and Bluetooth
short-range systems, as having a "huge
application" in plants. "We can use
[wireless] with [radio frequency] tags to
track the vehicle while it's being built,
including the parts and whole modules," he
says.
While Delphi's wireless agenda isn't as
ambitious as GM's, Roberts says he is
considering a completely wireless telephone
network to replace the PBX. "When you're
in the office, you would use the phone in a
docking station," he says. "It would give
everyone one telephone number and save
us the service charges [from changing
numbers on wired phones]."
Fat Applications
Bandwidth-heavy ERP systems such as
those from SAP AG will also boost the
demand for bandwidth on both wired and
wireless networks, according to Claude
Marais, strategic relations manager for
business systems at The Coca-Cola Co. in
Atlanta. Coca-Cola has signed a deal with
Equant NV in Amsterdam to design and
manage a new wired network. The bottler
will roll it out over the next two years to
provide the higher bandwidth and reliability
demanded by SAP systems.
Gus Otto, a network architect at Caterpillar
Inc. in Peoria, Ill., says he's looking at
ways to facilitate speedier
desktop-to-desktop videoconferencing by
connecting Caterpillar's conference
participants on the outer edges of the
network. That way, he wouldn't have to
pull video and audio packets through the
network core, which can degrade
videoconferencing and slow down the
whole network.
Making the concept work, according to
Otto, is a matter of setting network
policies that head off videoconferencing
traffic at the network border and route it
through servers outside the main firewalls.
Although some might see this as a security
risk, Otto says connections could be made
between sites over a private WAN
backbone to reduce the risk.
Caterpillar is also exploring the use of
"spoofing" technologies to optimize satellite
systems for its global video teleconferencing network. These
bypass IP procedures, which check for data integrity packet by
packet. That double-checking creates a serious bottleneck in
satellite networks that pipe traffic through a 44,000-mile round trip
to and from satellites.
Atlanta-based Porsche Cars North America Inc. has already used
such spoofing techniques on its satellite data network serving
dealers, according to John Jacobs, the company's manager of
dealer and field operations.
Instead of checking for receipt packet by packet, which is
standard when using Internet protocols, spoofing fools the satellite
into believing that all the data in a transaction has been received,
and it checks only once at the end of a session for missing
packets. Jacobs says spoofing combined with data compression has
reduced latency in the Porsche network by two-thirds.
Thin Prices
Though bandwidth requirements will skyrocket during the next
several years, network managers say they expect to be paying a
relatively steady price for the increased capacity.
GM's Sabharwal says, "In terms of the cost for pure bandwidth, we
are doing significantly better than Moore's Law," meaning advances
in network performance in terms of constant dollars are outpacing
advances in computer chip technologies.
Telecommunications providers say this stems from deployment of
advanced optical networking gear that wrings more and more
capacity out of fiber-optic strands that had a capacity of roughly
135M bit/sec. 20 years ago.
Ben Vos, director of network planning and design at Sprint Corp.,
says dramatic advances in fiber-optic network technology will allow
the company to increase the capacity of its optical network to 40G
bit/sec. by 2002.
If customer demand warrants, Vos says, other multiplexing
technology exists or is in the pipeline that could help the company
boost the capacity of its network to 3.2TB - without having to lay
another piece of fiber. WorldCom Inc. also plans to use multiplexing
technologies to increase the backbone of its UUnet Technologies
Inc. subsidiary to 40G bit/sec., in a similar time frame.
This jump in the capacity of fiber-optic networks results from use
of what is called Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM)
technologies, according to David Willis, an analyst at Meta Group
Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
DWDM increases the data capacity of a fiber strand by piping
streams of data along different wavelengths of light, riding on a
pulsating laser.
According to engineers at Lucent Technologies Inc. in Murray Hill,
N.J., telecommunications carriers have already deployed DWDM
equipment that can accommodate up to 80 wavelengths, some
running at 2.5G bit/sec. and others at 10G bit/sec. for a total
throughput on an individual fiber of 400G bit/sec. Tests are said to
be under way on DWDM equipment that can handle a total of 800G
bit/sec. on a single fiber.
Mike Coghill, head network engineer at backbone provider Global
Crossing Ltd. in Hamilton, Bermuda, says optical offers the best
performance for the money.
"Internet requirements are doubling every six months or so," Coghill
says, "and businesses are moving from 1.5M bit/sec. to gigabit
access to local exchange. Today in a network, I have to add
multiple electrical layers [to direct network traffic], and we can
move photons easier than we can move electrons."
To bypass the optical-to-electrical conversion needed to route
traffic in service provider networks, Coghill says Global Crossing has
deployed two optical switches at major network hubs in Brook
Haven, N.Y., and London, and it is testing U.S. terrestrial fiber lines
to a cross-Atlantic link between the U.S. and Great Britain.
Tiny mirrors in these switches direct traffic by shining optical
wavelengths from fibers on incoming ports to the fibers on outgoing
ports.
Bottleneck
The gushers of bandwidth delivered by long-haul optical networks
can create a traffic jam when they connect routers serving the
borders of corporate networks, warns analyst Ken McGee at
Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
It's at this outer edge where data speeding between sites at 2.5G
bit/sec. or even 10G bit/sec. can be shunted into a holding
pattern, waiting to land in a corporate network that's running at,
say, 100K bit/sec.
To solve the latter problem, some companies are using
load-balancing switches that route requests based on the
application.
Requests for product and price lookups might be flipped to a
database server that's available at once and is known to hold just
that information, for example. Other types of traffic, such as e-mail
or requests for specific Web document pages, could be sent to
other servers dedicated to those applications.
This requires users to actively manage network traffic, including
prioritizing traffic by type - voice, streaming video or pure data, for
example - before it's routed to the core of the enterprise network,
McGee says. This is because each has different bandwidth
requirements, with video hogging bandwidth and voice requiring
only 56K bit/sec., for example.
GM, Delphi and FedEx have all opted for Asynchronous Transfer
Mode (ATM) technology to help manage and dynamically allocate
bandwidth on their networks by automatically sizing the pipe to
accommodate the type of underlying data.
GM has also incorporated frame-relay technology into its networks.
Sabharwal says the combination of the two technologies allows the
company to more efficiently manage its network demands.
ATM, Sabharwal says, gives GM more flexibility in the network,
compared with using separate networks for each service, such as
video or data or large image files. This lets it increase the size of a
pipe from 6M bit/sec. to 45M bit/sec., depending on the underlying
traffic.
Voice Options
While voice over IP has received a lot of buzz over the past year,
FedEx currently views it as a niche solution compared with
switched voice, according to Burke.
Voice over IP sends phone calls over the Internet as packets, while
switched voice transmits the call as an analog signal over a public
network run by carriers such as WorldCom or Sprint.
"The technology is not there yet," Burke says, "but you can use it
in Europe to save money," over the relatively high costs of
still-regulated voice networks operated by carriers on that
continent.
In the U.S., where large customers can command rates of a nickel
or less per minute for phone service, "voice over IP is just not cost
effective," according to Delphi's Robertson.
Corporate network managers view advanced systems as
increasingly essential to the management of their entire businesses
and supply chains.
Delphi's Robertson says his company uses its network to support
"global engineering systems, e-biz initiatives, collaboration with our
customers and suppliers through portals, sophisticated
supply-chain optimization, scheduling and capacity planning."
Burke says FedEx is willing to explore any network technology that
supports two simple but vital goals: quality and customer service. |
