North American Network Operators Group

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Re: ATM Wide-Area Networks (was: sell shell accounts?)

  • From: Vincent J. Bono
  • Date: Fri Jul 26 21:50:31 1996

<snip>

> ATM can be used in two main modes: as a funny form of TDM
> or as a means of overcommitting resources.
> 
> The former is in use now in the land of InternetMCI,
> ESNET, NSI and others, for better or for worse, and has
> been for some time.   As Tim and others have pointed out,
> it works, given some tweaking here and there with things
> like EPD.
> 
> The latter has been observed in use as an offering by MFS,
> and it had obvious problems.  It has also been observed
> from time to time at the ATM-using NAPs, and also had
> obvious problems.  These problems were arguably not
> directly the fault of ATM, but of arguably broken
> interface and adaptation devices like ADSUs, ethernet
> framers and FRADs.

I'd wonder if a large part of the problems are not avoidable, but that 
since most persons do not as yet have a "feel" for ATM, its harder to 
see and diagnose building problems, or predict failure points.  ATM 
acting like TDM *still* isn't TDM.  "Load" testing is fine and well 
(sorry DISA folks) but it's the field use that matures technology and 
turns proposed process into good technique.  We've watched the ATM 
simulations (and even helped with the code for a few) but nothing came 
close to predicting what happened in real life when clients implemented 
it, especially in the multimedia (IP/TV/VOICE) applications.

-v
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