Cell Relay Archive

[albert.e.manfredi@boeing.com]

In article <3840A49F.CBCA2E2@cs.wustl.edu>,
  Jonathan Turner <jst@cs.wustl.edu> wrote:
>
> Paul Koning wrote:

[ ... ]

> > As far as I can see, ATM definitely does add value to the
> > network.  For one thing, it offers a large range of possible
> > bandwidths because it's layered on top of the SONET hierarchy.
> > (Admittedly the same goes for POS, but ATM has a significant
> > head start.)
> >
> 	Exactly. And POS is the competition that matters, not
> 	SONET. Unless ATM can play a bigger role than supporting
> 	IP in ISP backbones, it will become marginalized, and
> 	eventually squeezed out by POS (perhaps as soon as within
> 	5 years).

I'll certainly agree with that, Jon, but in my opinion, putting ATM
over IP is not the way to achieve what you're after. All that would do
is degrade what IP by itself can do on that same medium.

In my opinion, and this is largely up to the baby bells, the only way
for ATM to survive is for the baby bells to layer it over ADSL, and to
offer over that ADSL line _more_ than just IP services. ATM that
doesn't go to the customer premises (or to the desktop) is not so easy
to justify, what with VLANs and VPNs now being available in
connectionless datagram backbones.

Eventually, even IP by itself might be able to provide such a flexible,
general purpose drop to the customer premises, but for now, it can't.

--
Bert
manfredi@arl.bna.boeing.com


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