Cell Relay Archive

[David Walker <DHWalker@uci.edu>]

manfredi@engr04.comsys.rockwell.com (Albert E. Manfredi) wrote:
>In article <jstoneD7nH23.DF0@netcom.com>, jstone@netcom.com (Jeffrey Stone) 
writes:
..
>On the other hand, the ATM Forum is apparently going to address _real_
>use of ATM for voice, in which, I would expect, an SVC is assigned to
>each telephone call, at typically 64 Kb/s bandwidth.
>
>I'm puzzled about your thinking that this would be "an issue." After all,
>the way ATM does signaling, it seems tailor-made for just this sort of
>service. It is, after all, a telco invention, yes? I think the only real
>issues are that people want this sort of ATM service to use the same
>Q.931 signaling as ISDN, rather than invent something else. And ATM does
>not do Q.931 now.
>
>Bert
>manfredi@engr05.comsys.rockwell.com

I agree.  It seems to me that, with ATM, we will start viewing
telephones in a manner similar to how we view dumb terminals.
Several years ago, we had Data PBXs that connected dumb terminals
to hosts.  Now we connect dumb terminals to terminal servers which are
connected to our enterprise networks.  Because the terminal servers use
a standard protocol (telnet), we achieve very good interoperability that,
among other things, allows us to use our desktop computers as dumb
terminals.

I believe the same thing will happen with "dumb telephones."  Our PBXs will
become nodes on our ATM networks and will use a standard voice protocol to
communicate with each other and with voice-capable computers on the net.

Software packages like Internet Phone show that software developers are
already thinking this way.  Does anyone know if any PBX vendors are doing
the same?

                                   David Walker
                                   Assistant Director
                                   Office of Academic Computing

                       Addresses:  Office of Academic Computing
                                   E2167 Engineering Gateway
                                   University of California, Irvine
                                   Irvine, CA 92717-2225
                                    DHWalker@uci.edu
                                    (714) 824-7037 (voice)
                                    (714) 824-2069 (FAX)
                                    http://mothra.nts.uci.edu/~dhwalker