Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bucky89 who wrote (51883)	8/11/1998 10:08:00 AM
From: The Phoenix	Respond to of 61433

The author wrote: >An emerging class of high-speed IP switches >can read the beginning and end of packets at >line speeds, a capability that will go a long >way toward enabling QoS in IP environments. My Remarks >What does speed of an IP >switch have to do with it's ability to discern packet types? I mean, yes, certainly >processor speed is fundamental but what does this have to do with trunk speed? Your response: I think the author is talking about the ability of high-speed IP switches to quickly determine the length of each oncoming IP packet. This is indeed one of the major hurdles in providing IP QoS. The TOS byte is easy to read and use, as opposed to determining packet length is where much of the work is at. Once you do this, you can sort the packets out into different queues by packet length. That way you can prevent long packets from blocking shorter, time-sensitive packets. This is a very processor-intensive task, and becomes even more difficult when packets rush at you at OC-48 or OC-192 speeds. You have to come up with special router h/w architectures to distribute the processing load among multiple processors. I'm sure there are lots of other technical issues that I'm not familiar with. Bucky, as you can see you and I agree once again. However the author clearly didn't MEAN processor speed as he/she went on to discuss line speed and never made mention of fundamental router capabilities to read and manage packets. Read the article..the author is not well informed. Gary (OG)