LANTimes article "A better Internet awaits us" [Nice ASND references to Qwest and GTE contracts]
wcmh.com./98/98aug/808a039a.html
In the future, alternatives may enable
information flow to avoid the bottlenecks that
impede it today
By Alan S. Kay
To visualize today's Internet, picture the vast
freeway system that traverses the United
States. Think of a broad highway, built largely with
federal dollars, that has created new categories of
traffic which now threaten to choke it. No vehicle
can claim a priority to travel, regardless of the
urgency of its mission or the perishability of its
cargo. When it's rush hour, everyone slows down.
Now picture diamond-marked carpool lanes that let
certain vehicles cruise past those stalled on the rest
of the highway. That's QoS (quality of service).
The need for QoS is driving the academic
community's effort to create Internet2 and the U.S.
government's NGI (Next Generation Internet)
initiative. These new national networks will be able
to ensure timely delivery of complex binary data.
In April, Vice President Al Gore unveiled a plan for
the newest backbone addition to the Internet's
developing successor. Called Abilene, the new
network is being developed by UCAID (University
Corporation for Advanced Internet Development),
which is using Qwest Communications International
Inc.'s nationwide fiber optic network and
technologies from Cisco Systems and Northern
Telecom Ltd.
At the end of 1999, the Abilene project is supposed
to connect member universities through regional
GigaPoPs (gigabit-per-second points of presence)
and interconnect with the vBNS (very high
performance Backbone Network Service), a
high-speed network run by the National Science
Foundation and MCI Communications Corp.
Business can't wait
The history of the Internet suggests that these
academic and government efforts will need a newer,
faster Internet, but business can't wait for that to
happen. Effective Internet-based applications, such
as videoconferencing and distance training, have the
potential to cut costs and time to market, but without
the reliability promised by NGI, their potential will
never be realized.
In response to these business demands, ISPs are
rushing to upgrade their Internet backbones to
support time-dependent and other mission-critical
services. A January 1998 survey by Business
Research Group indicated that ISPs are rebuilding
their core networks and POPs to increase
availability and offer different classes of services
accompanied by SLAs (service-level agreements).
The survey indicated that 32 percent of the 150
ISPs queried offer QoS agreements, and 34 percent
already sell a preferred pool of bandwidth at a
premium price--a percentage that is certain to
increase.
The most readily available way to support modern
business tools is through increased bandwidth. Most
major national service providers are adding optical
fiber and fast switches to increase throughput. Sprint
Corp., for example, has deployed Cisco's 12000
Series of gigabit switch routers on its Internet
backbone, allowing it to offer OC-12 (622Mbps)
throughput. And newcomer Qwest has completed
more than a third of the build-out of its 16,000-mile
IP-over-optical-fiber network.
Optical fiber has the additional advantage of
supporting WDM (wave division multiplexing),
which can increase the carrying capacity of optical
fiber cost-effectively. Sprint, for instance, is building
from its current level of WDM support on 80
percent of its route miles toward 98 percent by the
end of 1998.
To further that effort, Sprint announced in March
that it is adding 40-channel Dense WDM systems
from CIENA Corp. The CIENA technology is
scalable to as many as 96 channels per SONET
fiber, allowing a throughput of as much as 240Gbps.
But throwing bandwidth at the QoS issue demands
is at best a short-term solution. The NGI and
Internet2 plans incorporate differentiated levels of
guaranteed maximum packet loss and latency and
minimum "jitter."
Short-term solution
ISPs are considering two approaches to support
business-grade connectivity. One involves modifying
IP's "democratic" packet handling, either as a
response to a request or by assigning priorities to
different packet origins or classes of service. Most
IP-based carriers are looking toward priority packet
handling plan to implement the RSVP (Resource
ReSerVation Protocol) extension to IP, which will
let users request extra bandwidth for particular uses.
The Business Research Group survey reported that
25 percent of national ISPs, 8 percent of regional
ISPs, and 75 percent of RBOCs will offer RSVP by
the end of 1999.
The other infrastructure modification that will
support business SLAs is a shift to ATM, which
provides a homogeneous environment within which
data streams can be prioritized. For example,
Qwest, which has championed IP as the vehicle for
business connectivity, announced in April that it was
buying ATM switches and network-management
tools from Ascend Communications Inc. According
to an April 21 press release, Quest claims this new
network, managed by Ascend's Navis end-to-end
network and service-management products, will
provide Qwest the ability to offer data services with
SLAs to their corporate customers.
Providers seeking to differentiate themselves in the
marketplace have begun to offer such SLAs for their
IP packet-based networks. In April, GTE
Internetworking announced it will credit its
customers for one day of service whenever they
cannot reach a site within 10 minutes "because of a
failure in GTE Internetworking's backbone," or
sustain more than a 10 percent packet loss on the
backbone over that same period.
GTE also will deploy Ascend ATM, frame relay
switches, and network-management software in
building out its Global Network Infrastructure, which
is planned to elevate throughput to OC-48
(2.5Gbps). "Quality of service is a front-page issue
with us," says Ken Baldwin, assistant vice president
for product marketing at GTE Internetworking in
Irving, Texas. "We intend to offer customers SLAs
with metrics."
Such commitments to service guarantees, however
limited, represent the first halting steps toward an
Internet that business can rely on.
Alan S. Kay covers business and consumer
technology from San Francisco. |
