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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gfr fan who wrote (29806)	4/20/1999 12:19:00 AM
From: gfr fan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 45548

Someone asked about 3Com's Smart NIC or DYnamic Access strategy - this pulls layer two and layer three switches. QOS: Moving Beyond the Marketing Hype [CMP Data Communications, Rcvd:Apr 19,03:22:00 EDT] By: Robin Layland, Contributing Editor Listen to Cisco, Lucent, and Nortel hold forth on end-to-end quality of service and it's clear it's at the top of their agendas. And the networking giants aren't simply generating white papers saying how great it is. They're also adding QOS to their products. Listen to Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and other vendors of network interface cards hold forth on management and it's clear it's at the top of their agendas. The trouble is that one camp has made no real gains while the other has completely missed the point. To paraphrase Twain: They all talk about it, but they don't actually do much to make QOS implementation or management any easier. Enter 3Com Corp. (Santa Clara) and its Dynamicaccess LAN Agent. The device is poised to make QOS a reality and ease the transition to real-time problem management. What's more, it could very well pit 3Com in a head-to-head battle against Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.). Field of Screams Sure, switch and router vendors have taken the first important step to QOS by adding 802.1p and Diffserv capabilities. 802.1p takes care of the LAN (Layer 2 switches forward packets based on the information in their Ethernet headers), and Diffserv comes into play on the WAN (where Layer 3 switches and routers base forwarding decisions on the IP header). The good news is that the newer switches recognize the fields and act upon them. The bad news is how the fields are set. Basically, it's an administrative nightmare: If there were software that could set the values (which there isn't), net managers would have to go to every PC, set the values, and hope the users didn't learn how to change the values (which they would). So the switch vendors decided that a better way to determine priority was to look at the IP port number and other information. Many apps use a well-known port number; consider FTP, which opens a control session on port 21 and transfers data on port 20. But not all apps use the same port number every time. And dynamic port selection is being used more and more for real-time communication from Web pages. With applications that don't use the same port number each time, it's impossible to tell the switch what kind of QOS to impose. And it's only more difficult when data is encrypted. Traffic that passes through a VPN (virtual private network), for example, hides most of its information from the switch. The Right Stuff Sound like the right time for software that can simply recognize applications? That's what 3Com's Dynamicaccess LAN Agent does. All that net managers have to do is tell it which apps get the highest priority; it takes things from there. But net managers also should pay attention to what Dynamicaccess LAN Agent means for the industry. Cisco, Lucent Technologies Inc. (Murray Hill, N.J.), and Nortel Networks (Billerica, Mass.) would be wise to promote 3Com's solution. Without it, their products will still be plagued by QOS weaknesses-and eventually their revenues will fall. Adapter vendors will need to pay royalties to 3Com or come up with their own software. And overall, 3Com's effort is good for the industry because end-to-end QOS will finally become reality. Further, net managers will be able to manage the entire process from a single console, prohibit users from changing priorities, and create one script for setting priorities networkwide. All 3Com adapters now come with Dynamicaccess LAN Agent software. For a fee, customers can install it on any Windows PC that has an adapter that supports NDS (Netware Directory Services) (practically all do). And 3Com has thrown in a few other goodies. One such add-in keeps track of performance information. Say someone calls in complaining about response time. With Dynamicaccess, the network manager can see exactly what response time the user is getting and the applications he or she is using. Needless to say, it's a very helpful tool in determining if there really is a problem-and if so, where and how bad it is. 3Com also is working with Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) to make Dynamicaccess part of the Windows 2000 system. This will solve the distribution problem in the long run-although it could be a very long run, since migrating to Windows 2000 will not be easy. And 3Com doesn't have a Unix version of Dynamicaccess LAN Agent, which leaves a lot of important servers out of the loop. If enough net managers express an interest, the vendor could be convinced to port its software. So in one bold stroke 3Com is making QOS a reality in corporate networks. When someone suggests implementing QOS, net managers have two choices: Install Dynamicaccess LAN Agent now, or wait a few years for it to come to you.