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: djane who wrote (51959)	8/12/1998 4:20:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Must-read. Ascend enters optical networking fray broadband-guide.com News, August 1998 By Stephen Hardy Ascend Communications Inc. (Alameda, CA) threw its weight behind the push to retire the transmission layer from future network topologies with the introduction of an OC-48 (2.5-Gbit/sec) interface that enables its new GX 550 "Smart" Core atm Switch to interface directly into the optical layer. The company is the second data-communications equipment manufacturer to unveil an optical internetworking strategy, a move that reinforces the emerging battle line between traditional telecommunications-equipment providers and upstart data-communications companies for control of tomorrow's network marketplace. Ascend's announcement represents another attack on traditional network architectures that contain separate switching and transmission layers. By incorporating such transmission-layer functions as grooming and automatic protection switching into the GX 550, Ascend contends that carriers and service providers will no longer need Synchronous Optical Network/Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SONET/sdh) add/drop multiplexers and digital crossconnect systems. The result is a combined switching/transmission layer that is protocol-transparent and provides a simplified, flexible architecture that carriers will find easier to manage. Like Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, CA), its chief competitor in the data-communications arena and the first company from that community to announce an optical internetworking strategy (see Lightwave, June 1998, page 1), Ascend envisions that this new hybrid layer will link directly into the optical layer via wavelength-division multiplexers (wdms) at OC-48 rates. Both companies have OC-192 (10-Gbit/sec) interfaces forthcoming but agree that OC-48 will be the optical internetworking "coin of the realm" for the foreseeable future. Unlike its data rival, however, [nice dig at CSCO] Ascend lined up some customers to stand behind its claims that optical internetworking can be implemented today. Both Williams Network (Tulsa, OK) and Frontier Corp. (Rochester, NY) are testing the switch with wdm systems. Wayne Price, network-development manager at Williams, says lab tests of the switch have been conducted already. Interoperability trials with Pirelli's T-31 omds wdm system have been successfully completed, while similar tests with ciena's MultiWave Sentry system were due to wrap up in June. Field trials of the GX 550 were slated to follow in July and end this month over a link between Washington and Atlanta. Assuming a successful completion of these trials, Price says Williams will then deploy the switch in its fiber-optic network. The flexibility provided by atm over optical networks will give Williams a multiservice capability that should prove attractive to the company's client base of service providers, says Price. The optical internetworking strategy also will significantly simplify network topology while ensuring reliability, he adds. Interestingly, most of the wdm equipment currently in the Williams network comes from Nortel (Brampton, ON, Canada). But Williams has no plans to conduct interoperability tests with the Nortel equipment, according to Price, who cited a desire to promote a multivendor environment as the reason. [Fascinating] For its part, Frontier will test the interoperability of the GX 550 and the 16-wavelength SpectralWave multiplexer from NEC America (Herndon, VA). Jim Watts, Frontier's director of transmission engineering, says tests originally were planned for June but had been postponed, in all likelihood to July. "It's just a matter of coordinating with NEC and Ascend as to when everybody can get together and get the interfaces out to do that," he says. "Because we certainly have network available to do it." The network includes two functional SONET rings of more than 3100 mi each in the western United States as well as additional routes across the country. More rings are under construction as part of the company's ongoing cross-country expansion. The SpectralWave system is an integral part of this infrastructure. Meanwhile, the GX 550 is being deployed as part of an atm network that Frontier also has underway. With both pieces of equipment deployment already, most of the pretest certification work should be completed when the interoperability tests begin. Thus, Watts anticipates the test process will flow smoothly. "I would expect that to get the test up, it wouldn't take more than a few days to begin testing," he says. Although the test period has yet to be defined, "I think we'll probably find what we need to find out within two weeks," he predicts. For the sake of convenience, Watts believes the tests will take place close to Frontier's Rochester, NY, headquarters. "We're probably looking at Rochester to Syracuse or Rochester to Buffalo - probably Rochester to Syracuse, because we've got an inline amplifier between there," he offers. A successful test of the OC-48 interface could prove an important step in Frontier's plans to expand the capabilities of its network. For example, the atm network initially will be set up at OC-12 (622 Mbits/sec); should the interoperability test go well, the higher-speed interface could see deployment starting at the end of this year. Meanwhile, Frontier has further evolution in mind. "We're going to have a convergence here of IP and atm," Watts reveals. "We've got IP over atm, and what we're looking at is a separate IP network, direct over wdm." The company is investigating IP routers for such an enhancement, he says. Ascend also has succeeded in spreading the optical internetworking gospel to Europe. Deutsche Telekom Systemloesungen GmbH has selected the GX 550 for use in the Gigabit Testbed operated by Deutsches Forschungsnetz (dfn). The dfn network is a computer-based communications infrastructure for research, science, education, and culture in Germany. The addition of the Ascend hardware will enable the dfn to provide stm-16 (2.5-Gbit/sec)/OC-48 atm core connections for the delivery of video, voice, and data traffic to German universities and research centers. Meanwhile, more traditional telecommunications transport equipment suppliers have begun to adapt their product lines to meet the carriers' changing needs as well. While it remains too soon to tell whether companies like Cisco and Ascend will carve a significant niche for themselves in the telecommunications market, the willingness of companies like Frontier and Williams to adapt optical internetworking strategies may indicate that new-generation carriers, at least, are willing to listen to what data-equipment manufacturers have to say about the future of optical network architectures. Back to the News Index Home \| Electronic Press Room \| This Week in Fiber \| Subscribe \| 1998 Media Kit \| Calendar of Events \| Site Map \| Add Your Company \| Meet the Publisher \| Company Index \| Contractors \| Categories \| Sponsors, Advertisers \| Ask the Expert! \| Product Showcase \| LiveEvents! \| Search The Communications Web Sites Broadband Guide \| Contractors Directory \| LiveEvents! \| LIGHTWAVE Xtra! \| Wireless Integration Xtra! \| Cable Foreman Xtra! \| Cabling Installation & Maintenance Xtra! Visit the Optoelectronics Web Sites Meet the Publisher Comments or Questions about this site, please contact the Webmaster. cCopyright 1995-1998 PennWell Media Online LLC This page was updated on 7-Aug-98.

To: djane who wrote (51959)	8/12/1998 4:33:00 AM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Pushpendra Mohta, of AT&T's CERFnet unit, discusses the future infoworld.com August 10, 1998 By Michael Vizard InfoWorld Electric AT&T late last month finalized its acquisition of Teleport Communications Group, a local exchange service provider based in New York. As part of that deal, AT&T also acquired TCG's Internet service provider business unit, known as CERFnet. This unit will now form the backbone of AT&T's Internet services for corporate customers. Pushpendra Mohta, who now serves as executive vice president of this business unit, outlined the company's emerging strategy to InfoWorld Executive News Editor Michael Vizard. InfoWorld: What is the relationship between AT&T's other ISP services and the services being offered by CERFnet? Mohta: AT&T has a product offering called WorldNet that has consumer customers. What we were doing was sort of a superset of what their product offers. In terms of business access, they just got into that about a year and a half ago. We've been doing this for 10 years. Our backbone, at this point, is bigger than their backbone. And we have many more private peer relationships than they do. We'll take all these things, toss them up, and see what shapes up. InfoWorld: How big is CERFnet's infrastructure? Mohta: We have a backbone that spans OC-3 and OC-12 circuits. It goes to about 35 cities and services 85 markets from those cities. We'll need an OC-48 network by the end of the year. We also have eight Web-hosting centers, located throughout the country. TCG was actually the largest competitive local exchange carrier, so they're bigger than [WorldCom's MFS subsidiary]. A lot of people know about MFS, but not TCG. InfoWorld: What are the implications of the recent AT&T alliance with British Telecom? Mohta: We need to have end-to-end control over the infrastructure in order to deliver quality of service. Before this deal, an ISP would have sent traffic over an amazing number of providers. At the time of [CERFNet's] merger with TCG, the choice was to merge with the person who owns the local facility or merge with somebody who owns wide area traffic. We chose the local merger first because when we looked at the statistics on carriers, 40 percent of the failures were power-related and 40 percent were related to the last mile. And the cost of accessing that last mile from the [Regional Bell Operating Companies, RBOCs] was atrocious. So [CERFNet] merged with TCG, which was then acquired by AT&T. So now you have a combination of a really large ISP, the largest local exchange carrier, and AT&T. You have to remember that AT&T pays $12 billion a year in access fees to the RBOCs, so they needed local access. That's also why they want TCI, because the only other way to gain local access is over cable. InfoWorld: Are the providers with strong fiber networks, such as TCG the ones most likely to be acquired? Mohta: AT&T was a long-distance company, so they had fiber from San Diego to New York, but they did not have fiber once it got into somewhere such as San Diego. They just didn't have a distribution network. That's why they had to use Nynex on one end and Pacific Bell on the other end. But Nynex and Pacific Bell don't have fiber either, so they really don't have the same capacity. InfoWorld: This all means less competition down the road. What is driving all these acquisitions? Mohta: The marketplace is shrinking for two reasons. We all understand that we need to control the facility and get to scale. So there's a business reason to merge and a technical reason to merge. InfoWorld: Are you seeing increased demand for Web hosting, or are people now more comfortable with running their own Web sites? Mohta: As a provider, you need to determine the comfort factor of the customer and show them that your infrastructure is going to grow with them better than what they might want to try to build themselves. You can only bring so much bandwidth down to a site. But should the content flow over to the backbone, then we have the redundancy to support it. Most customers couldn't possibly create such a large infrastructure. But there are some legal restrictions sometimes on where certain content can live, so you will now see a lot of mixed sites as well. InfoWorld: What role does the ISP play in extranet development? Mohta: Very few [ISPs] have their own facilities. There are true infrastructure companies and everyone else is leasing capacity. There may be different services, but the core of the network is IP. I find it amusing that some ISPs claim they can make a network that is better for the pharmaceutical industry than for the automotive industry, because all you're doing is shipping IP packets. There are 2,500 ISPs, but what are they going to do going forward? I think they'll become resellers, for the infrastructure companies. InfoWorld: Everybody is talking about quality-of-service agreements, but nobody seems to know how to measure them. Will anything change here? Mohta: First, [users] need to know when they're not getting [the correct bandwidth]. We do one thing that nobody else does in that we publish real-time data on network performance. We measure things like delay from point to point on our network and packet loss ratios. And I think very soon, when we can control the facilities end-to-end, we'll be able to make even more significant guarantees. InfoWorld: Ultimately, what will be the relationship between data and voice on networks? Mohta: I think voice will be a very small component. It's just a question of when data will surpass voice traffic. Just look at what's happening with fax traffic as it moves to the Internet. There are other services, such as inbound 800 services, that will move to the Web also. And IP telephony is on the rise too. The things I used to pick up the phone to do, I can now do on the Net much faster and in a more customized way. For an overview of recent InfoWorld Electric interviews, go to Interviews at a glance. Go to the Week's Top News Stories Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Deputy News Editor, Carolyn April Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc. InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net \| SiteMap \| Search \| PageOne \| Reader/Ad Services \| \| Enterprise Careers \| Opinions \| Test Center \| Features \| \| Forums \| Interviews \| InfoWorld Print \| InfoQuote \|

To: djane who wrote (51959)	8/12/1998 4:38:00 AM
From: djane	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 61433

AT&T Solutions charts aggressive growth course zdnet.com By John Rendleman, PC Week Online August 11, 1998 5:10 pm ET RALEIGH, N.C. --- AT&T Solutions, the unit of the telecommunications giant that provides outsourcing and managed services for corporate clients, has its sights set on an aggressive revenue growth plan. The company, which will ring up about $1 billion in sales this year, expects by 2002 to reach $4 billion in annual revenues, said Jim Pagos, president and managing partner of AT&T Solutions Worldwide, at a press event here today at the company's Global Customer Support Center. That growth will be based on a steady stream of enhancements to the company's current offerings and a mix of new services for corporate data networks, Pagos said. "Those solutions are what we're working on in real time as we speak," he said. Among the planned advances, AT&T Solutions on Monday will enhance its GEMS (Global Enterprise Management System) to deliver better trouble tickets and more predictive and proactive management features, said Ed Nalbandian, managing partner of the Managed Network Services unit of the Florham Park, N.J., company. The GEMS upgrade will also offer improved disaster-recovery capabilities, a feature that detects intrusions into customers' networks and new "electronic bonding" capabilities between AT&T's network and customers' networks that let users monitor and control their networks via the Web, Nalbandian said. Other areas AT&T Solutions plans to target include managed firewall services, tunneling, authentication server management, administration services for domain names, administration of IP addresses and network address translation services, Nalbandian said. In the WAN arena, the company is also developing ATM support solutions for router-switched networks. AT&T Solutions also will push its managed services further into monitoring corporate servers and desktop applications, and assessing the year 2000 compliance of client networks, officials said. AT&T Solutions can be reached at www.att.com/solutions/.