NGN97 Next Generations Networks Conference
bcr.com)
NGN97 KEYNOTE: WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE BANDWIDTH?
Speaking at the Next Generation Networks conference in Washington,
DC, Nick McKeown, assistant professor of electrical engineering
and computer science at Stanford University, said that it is now
technically and economically feasible to produce terabit speed
routers. The Tiny Tera research project McKeown leads at Stanford
is developing a prototype 1Tbs router based on a crossbar switch
architecture, the absence of caching and a virtual output queuing
technique that significantly boosts throughput. (http://tiny-
tera.stanford.edu/tiny-tera/index.html). McKeown anticipates
near-term advances in semiconductors that will push router
performance levels to hundreds of terabits per second (Tbps). How
could we use all this capacity? McKeown calculates that even new
esoteric applications for the Internet, such as high-resolution,
collaborative 3D modeling, a virtual Louvre museum, or viewer-
defined sports broadcasts from stadiums equipped with hundreds of
video cameras, would be unable to fill-up the pipes.
NGN97 conference materials, audio tapes and CD-ROMs are available
for a fee from the organizers. Contact Business Communications
Review (tel. 800/227-1234 bcr.com).
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NGN97: NEXT GENERATION ACCESS
Carriers will find a significant economic incentive to use T1 ATM
access to bundle a variety of telecom services to small and
medium-sized businesses, according to Paul Thieken, senior product
manager for Nortel Multimedia Networks. Bundling services on a
single ATM access line leverages core ATM infrastructures
currently being deployed by the carrier, while positioning the
carrier network on the customer premise with a scalable,
multiservice interface. Thieken said reaching most small and
medium-sized businesses with fiber is still cost prohibitive, and
that a T1 ATM solution allows the most efficient use of scarce
bandwidth over the existing copper facilities. Scott Barvick,
director of software development for NetEdge Systems, described
how competitive local exchange carriers and ISPs are using T1 ATM
customer premise devices to provide differentiated Internet access
and LAN interconnect services. Steve Plote, senior manager for ADC
Telecommunications, said that an ATM Virtual Path switched ring
architecture is the most efficient Internet service transport for
carriers needing to support widescale xDSL services. This next-
generation transport platform has been defined by Bellcore
document GR-2837. Plote's presentation compared SONET TDM vs. ATM
VP Ring transport for backhauling traffic from large numbers of
DSLAMs.
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NGN97: NEXT GENERATION ROUTERS
Speaking at the Next Generation Networks conference in
Washington, DC, Dick Kachelmeyer, product manager for high-
performance networking at Ascend Communications, said Internet
bandwidth demands will imminently require a new generation of
routers capable of supporting OC-192 line rates, while handling
added functionality such as multicasting, classes of service,
packet classification, packet filtering, queue management, more
routes and greater route complexity. To meet the challenge,
Kachelmeyer said next-generation routers would need multiple
processors, multiple memories, multiple buses, segmented
pipelines, specialized ASICs and the ability to work in parallel.
Hemant Kanakia, founder and CEO of Torrent Networking, said his
company's new router uses only hardware-based route processing
and a proprietary algorithm to classify packets into flows on the
fly. Hank Zannini, founder of Avici Systems, expects Internet
traffic to grow somewhere between 1000x to 8000x by 2007. Avici
is developing a Terabit Switch Router that uses a multiprocessor
backplane architecture with a switch at every crosspoint in the
fabric. Zannini expects his design to scale from 4 to 9,600
ports for 600Mbps to 6Tbps of capacity. NGN97 conference
materials, audio tapes and CD-ROMs are available for a fee from
the organizers. Contact Business Communications Review (tel.
800/227-1234 bcr.com).
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NGN97: NEXT GENERATION ETHERNET
While emphasizing the preservation of the Ethernet frame format,
Menachem Abraham, President and CEO of Prominet Corp, outlined
the technical progress of Ethernet over the years, including the
status of current work in IEEE 802.1p (filtering for multicast)
and 802.1q (VLAN tagging). He said the next generation of
Ethernet would offer very low insertion delay at Gigabit speeds,
very low switch latency in Gigabit switches, aggregation of
traffic on multiple ports, and integration of routing functions
with high performance. What's missing? Abraham noted the
absence of end-to-end congestion management, as well as contract
guarantees based on latency, latency variation/jitter and
available bandwidth. Jeff White, VP of Marketing for Packet
Engines, compared and contrasted Gigabit Ethernet with ATM,
saying that GE is catching up in terms of scalability/speed,
wire-speed routing, and data-level QoS/flow control. White
expects the first deployment for Gigabit Ethernet to be power
workgroups, where applications such as CAD/CAM can immediately
utilize bandwidth greater than Fast Ethernet. From there, he
expects the technology will be tested in "shadow networks,"
eventually replacing campus backbones. Dominic Orr, president
and CEO of Alteon Networks, outlined the requirements and
performance characteristics of Gigabit Ethernet servers and
switches. Making use of the bandwidth requires new adapter
designs that can offload server cycles and synchronize between
server and protocol stack. Although noting that GE cannot match
the strict QoS guarantees of ATM, Orr predicted that by the end
of 1998, Gigabit Ethernet links will have fallen in price to a
level equal to 2.5x Fast Ethernet prices
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NGN97: NEXT GENERATION ISPS
By next year, the business of being an Internet Service Provider
(ISP) will have fragmented into at least four categories,
predicted Steve Thomas, Director of Internet Marketing for Ascend
Communications. First, there will be a small number of core
backbone carriers; second, wholesale access providers will appear
on the scene offering outsourced dial-in capacity to a new
generation of Mega-POPs; third, there will be value-added WAN
integrators; and fourth, there will be large numbers of "virtual
ISPs" that package the outsourced network capacity under their
own labels to end-users. Thomas expects ISPs will offer value-
added services or usage-based pricing as a means to survive. Dan
Minoli, Director of Engineering for TCG, held to view of
"switching in the core, routing at the edges" and said that ATM
is currently the most economical choice for building an ISP
network. Network management, he said, is a major part of the
cost structure. He expects that scaling the Internet will
require a whole new set of technologies and is pleased with
progress so far in gigabit routers. Allan Leinwand, CTO of
Digital Island, said that an ISP's network topology could be more
important than quantity of bandwidth. He argued that the best
choice for a global Web presence its to outsource capacity to
Honolulu, Hawaii, from where Digital Island maintains a "star
architecture" fiber network to points worldwide.
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NGN97: NEXT GENERATION WANS
Sixty percent of Sprint's traffic now travels over SONET,
according to Kathy Walker, assistant VP for Sprint Business, and
the carrier is firmly committed to putting 90% of its traffic
over SONET by the end of next year. Sprint is equally committed
to wave division multiplexing (WDM) and already has 16-channel
systems deployed in 30% of its network; 40-channel and 64-channel
WDM systems are currently under evaluation. Walker said Sprint's
long-term strategy calls for all its services to be carried over
an ATM infrastructure. A 3-tier deployment plan was outlined:
NEC ATM switches have been deployed at the core; as a second
step, a much larger number of ATM edge switches will be deployed;
and "protocol service nodes" will be used at the customer premise
to provide interfaces into the carrier cloud. Walker
characterized Sprint's recent deployment of Cisco's Gigabit
Switch Router with Packet over SONET interfaces as a tactical
decision to solve an immediate Internet bandwidth problem. Karyn
Mashima, VP Advanced Multimedia Communication Systems for Lucent
Technologies, said carriers are looking for multiservice switches
for their next-generation architectures and ATM provides the best
way of addressing these needs. Mashima argued that SONET is the
common denominator for voice and data networks. She also noted
that future Internet commerce applications would require tight
integration of data, video and call center voice technology.
Edsel Garciamendez-Budar, Director of Broadband Data Engineering
for MCI, said that global data communication carriers must
consolidate their separate overlay networks onto an integrated
infrastructure. The MCI deployment plan for 1997 and 1998 calls
for a continued deployment of two separate ATM trunking
infrastructures; one for consolidating ATM, Frame Relay, SMDS and
packet traffic, and one for carrying IP traffic. Service
interworking is a reality on the ATM backbone; although network
management is becoming burdensome and could be an inhibitor to
further expansion. Garciamendez-Budar predicted that the rapid
growth of traffic on the MCI Internet backbone will lead to a re-
evaluation of whether to continue carrying IP over ATM, instead
of directly over SONET.
FYI
Cisco Systems announced a 3-for-2 split of its common stock for
shareholders of record on November 18, 1997. The split, which is
expected to occur on December 16, is the sixth since the company's IPO in 1990. Previous two-for-one stock splits occurred in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1996.
(http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/146/1992.html)
Cisco Systems, November 4, 1997 |
