The IP over ATM Mailing List Archive by date

[schulter@zk3.dec.com]

On Fri, 29 Mar 96 19:30:34 +0200 Juha Heinanen 

> even if vod over atm would become popular, it won't replace the
>  internet.  it is rather a replacement of the current tv service.

I wasn't suggesting that VoD would replace the Internet, but was wondering
if VoD services would end up becoming a very large portion of the ATM
network traffic, thus making IP traffic a small percentage of the whole
(or if any other type of traffic, or even all other types of traffic,
would be much greater than the amount of IP traffic).

> it is hard for me to believe that majority of the companies
> participating in the atm forum would be ready to restrict the role of
> atm to vod and give up its use in data networks.

Again, I wasn't talking about any restrictions on the use of ATM, just
what optimizations or changes would be economically viable.  What I'm
asking is would the ATM Forum and ITU be motivated to make major
changes to ATM to better handle a type of traffic which might represent
only a small portion of the overall traffic.  I suppose this has more
to do with economics than solving the technical problems.  That is,
would it be cost effective to make major changes to the ATM infrastructure
(making switches more complex and expensive) just to handle IP traffic
more efficiently.  I think the answer would be that this would be
cost effective if IP really represents a significant portion (majority?)
of the total traffic.  However, if IP is just a small percentage of
whole, why increase the complexity and cost of the network just for IP.

So, to state it briefly: given all possible ATM traffic types, will IP
represent a significant enough percentage of the whole to make changing
ATM worthwhile and economical?

Again, I'm not talking about restricting what it there now, just questioning
if there is sufficient reason to make large changes to the current
technologies.  Saying that ATM shouldn't make changes specifically for IP
does not necessarily restrict its use as a data network (we may just
have to solve the technical problems differently, or not in the way
we would like to).

> therefore there is
> hope that the requirements of rsvp/int serv/multicasting will be taken
> seriously when the next work phase starts this summer.

It would be nice to have ATM address some of these issues, not necissarily
for IP specifically, but for data transmission in general.


 --- pete

------------------
Peter Schulter					schulter@zk3.dec.com
Digital UNIX Networking				voice (603) 881-2920
Digital Equipment Corp				voice (DTN) 381-2920
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