High Speed: Notworking

IS managers today, are faced with the

unenviable task of choosing a 'high-speed' networking technology which can actually 'slow

down' the network if not chosen with care. High-speed networking, in the real sense, is

all about building a network that reduces the bottlenecks at the backbone level and makes

the network look more like a superhighway that allows smooth flow of traffic into the

bylanes, without any traffic jams in between that can make your latest 200 MHz desktop

machine took like a 16 MHz machine that you junked a few years ago.

The expansion of high-speed networking

technologies from Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Ethernet Hunt Groups,

plus ATM and multimedia has caught much of the media and customer attention. The speed of

technology evolution has dramatically increased the number of offerings seen from

different networking vendors today. There is no limit to the vendor claims on speeds of

the backplane of switches ranging from as low as 3 Gbps to 75 Gbps, very few of them make

an attempt to educate the IS manager what these scary numbers mean to him. Yet, the need

for speed is intense as more and more bandwidth-hungry applications hog up the network

bandwidth and so is the speed of the processors on your desktop which seems to be doubling

by the year. Added to this, we have the frightening truth about every aspect of life

becoming dependent on the Internet. One of the studies recently conducted revealed that

the usage of the network from around 20 percent, today, is all set to increase to 80

percent by the year 2000-it is left to your imagination what the network needs to look

like five years from now. Research by reputed analysts has also revealed that the 80/20

trend has actually reversed. Networks used to have 80 percent of the traffic limited

within the workgroups and only 20 percent of the traffic having to reach up to the

backbone or the server, this trends seem to have reversed to only 20 percent of the

traffic being local and 80 percent of the traffic having to reach up to the backbone

level.

In this world of information technology

computing technologies, processor technologies, memory, storage et al come and go by the

day. Interestingly, the speed of technology retirement in networking, which is growing and

developing rapidly, is close to zero. Ethernet, which was created by a consortium of

Digital, Intel, and Xerox in 1978, is used in 86 percent of the market. Ethernet usage is

still expanding, and no major authority is suggesting its retirement. The RS232 serial

line standard, another major standard, is over 25-year-old and still dominates the

connection used for modems and many other computer options. There are some standards such

as Token Ring, which are gaining fewer new customers, but these tend to be an exception.

Many articles suggest that ATM and Gigabit

Ethernet are replacing FDDI. Market surveys show how the migration to new technologies is

slow, with 56 percent of large backbone still being FDDI-based. Migrations from FDDI are

being planned to ATM rather than the hot topic of Gigabit Ethernet, which is not seen as

complete and proven enough to risk at the heart of the network. ATM is the fastest of all

the high-speed networking technologies available today-a viable and popular option for

most backbones today. There is no theoretical limitation in the speed which ATM can scale

up to. ATM products are available at speeds as low as 25 Mbps (though not popular) to 155

Mbps (the most widely used) and are expected to scale up to 10 Gbps for WAN access. Apart

from raw speed ATM has its own advantages, it facilitates mixing of different types of

traffic (voice, video, and data) which makes ATM the best choice if you plan to integrate

voice, video, and data. Research by various sources have revealed that over 40 percent of

the network managers plan to implement ATM at the backbones by the year 2000 which is in

line with forested growth for ATM products. Some sources have also revealed that aircraft

manufacturers like Boeing plan to implement an ATM socket to every seat in the plane by

the turn of the century.

Implementing an ATM network could be

sometimes painful to network managers who have been fanatically loyal to Ethernet

technology. Migration to ATM from Ethernet involves shifting from a Frame type of data

format to a cell type format. Which means that a lot needs to change in the way you build

and run applications on an ATM network if one needs to realize the advantages of having

migrated to a 'high-speed atm network'. This is where the newest technology Gigabit

Ethernet could play a role in providing ease of use, familiarity, and raw speed of 100

Mbps.

There are many networking players who have

already started shipping products that offer Gigabit Ethernet ports. Adapter cards

supporting 10/100/1000 Mbps speed have started showing up in advertisements, similarly

switches supporting 10/100/1000 Mbps speeds are getting shipped by the Big 4 networking

vendors like Cisco, Cabletron, 3Com, and Bay. In the long term, there is little doubt that

Gigabit Ethernet will have a lot to offer but the question is whether it makes sense to

invest today. So it would probably be wise for network managers to choose either ATM as

the backbone or a Switched Fast Ethernet if they feel they don't need to cross the 100

Mbps barrier. What looks obvious is a definite need for a 1000 Mbps kind of a backbone by

the year 2000, which only Gigabit Ethernet technology has a lot to offer in terms of

familiarity, ease of use, and probably cost too.

But as in every case just as the saying

goes: "It is people who drive technology and technology does not drive people."

So it is you who need to make the choice with care after a thorough understanding of your

applications running on the network, of FDDI, Ethernet, Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet

until may be Terabit Ethernet moves in to add to a network manager's worries of which

technology is the right choice.