Cell Relay Archive

["C. M. Heard/VVNET, Inc." <heard@vvnet.com>]

Paul Koning wrote:
> Jonathan Turner wrote:
> > ...
> > With hindsight, it's now easy to see that this was a poor
> > strategy. What's more, it's not hard to see how we might
> > have avoided the trap we fell into. Rather than subordinate
> > ATM to IP, we should have been using IP as a subnet technology
> > for carrying ATM traffic.
>
> Maybe I'm missing the point, but this sounds strange.
>
> I think the real issue is that changing infrastructure is
> (comparatively) easy, while changing end to end protocols
> is very hard.  That's because there are so many boxes
> involved and so many implementations to change, and most of
> them are hard to change platforms like PCs.
...
> This is why CIF (cells in frames) failed, as expected.
> It addressed the lesser problem (installation of new NICs)
> without addressing the bigger one (replacement of all the
> applications).  It seems to me that ATM over IP is a slight
> tweak of CIF (moved up a layer) and will have the same
> difficulties.

Agreed.  And unless I'm missing something, ATM over IP makes
even less technological sense than CIF did, or LANE.

Mike
--
C. M. Heard/VVNET, Inc.
heard@vvnet.com