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To: JMD who wrote (1639)	7/22/1998 10:46:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 12823

[SMS] New mgmt. tool could grow DSL services July 22, 1998 Network World via NewsEdge Corporation : Chances are many users have contemplated digital subscriber line (DSL) services, but few have actually been able to get their networks on it. Many issues need to be resolved regarding DSL. For example, many products really don't deliver the oft-touted speeds of up to 7M bit/sec, and most users can count on having to deal with substandard line conditions before they can implement DSL. Users also have to be located in an area with a service provider willing to deal with DSL implementations. Between a lack of usable services and a heaping serving of DSL alphabet soup - asymmetric DSL (ADSL), high-bit-rate DSL (HDSL), ISDN DSL (IDSL), rate-adaptive ADSL (RADSL) or very-high-speed DSL (VDSL) - users have been left scratching their heads in many cases. But an emerging technology, if deployed on a wide scale, could help bring DLS services to market faster: Subscriber Management Systems (SMS) from IBM, RedBack Networks and others could help eliminate some of the confusion and accelerate the deployment of DSL across the U.S. Lightening the load SMS technology, which can be implemented in server hardware or software, helps solve the DSL alphabet interoperability problem by accepting thousands of connections from multiple DSL Access Multiplexers (DSLAM), each supporting vendor-specific DSL implementations if necessary and translating them into IP datastreams. It then passes this IP data in aggregated form to upstream service providers over high-speed data links. Regardless of how traffic is presented, the SMS device offloads service provider backbone routers of the heavy processing that can limit the scalability of high-speed networks. DSLAM interoperability is particularly important to service providers because they often contract with multiple carriers to offer their customers different DSL implementations and pricing, and maximum service- area coverage. Carriers around the San Francisco Bay area, for example, employ frame relay and ATM cell transport and symmetric DSL as well as ADSL implementations to provide different data rates of bridged, routed and tunneled data services. An SMS server can be integrated with the existing Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) database security server that service providers employ for subscriber provisioning, accounting and management. RADIUS security software includes an authentication server, client protocols and an accounting server. These pieces work together to authenticate and validate user network and application access. As a RADIUS client, SMS servers let carriers manage DSL end users with the software already in place for the dial-up network, including custom back-office applications developed in-house. And just as it does with the dial-up network, RADIUS enables carriers to get thousands of DSL users up quickly and inexpensively. The SMS also enables service provider flexibility in deploying a multitude of DSL services via a new management function called "multiple contexts. " A context is a virtual machine with a separate administrative domain for security, accounting and management. Each context contains a unique routing entity, independent address spaces and forwarding tables, and multiple RADIUS clients to allow complete, secure data partitioning. A single SMS can support as many as 20 distinct contexts. Deploying multiple contexts helps solve DSL deployment issues for carriers and service providers. The technology lets carriers provide wholesale services to multiple service providers. Until now, carriers that wholesale their services have had to dedicate one physical link or device to each service provider or corporate customer. All calls from a subscriber to a particular service provider or corporate customer have gone through a single link or device, limiting the scalability of that environment. Multiple context technology lets the carrier create a separate "virtual SMS" for each service provider or corporate customer requiring service. The SMS dynamically matches individual subscribers to the appropriate service as part of the authentication process. This way, a carrier can quickly add a new wholesale customer simply by creating a new, unique context in the existing SMS, without any worries about address or user name conflicts with existing customers. This approach leads rapid, inexpensive provisioning. Flexibility fix Multiple context technology also gives service providers flexibility in creating end-user-to-network connections via a capability known as dynamic service selection. By defining multiple unique RADIUS profiles for a single end user, service providers can configure the SMS to access multiple services across the same physical link, either simultaneously or independently. By day, for example, a telecommuter can log on to a corporate access account charged to the parent company, while at night, the same subscriber can use a personal account to surf the World Wide Web. Simone is director of product management at RedBack Networks in Sunnyvale, Calif. He can be reached at dan@rback.com. [Copyright 1998, Network World]