InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
January 24, 2000
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Customers want more bandwidth--and aren't fussy about how they get it
By Terry Sweeney
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racticality is the order of the day, as the service protocol wars of the last 10 years show their first signs of abating. Customers are less concerned about whether they use frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode, or IP services and more concerned about basic, nontechnical requirements, such as cost-effectiveness and flexibility.This pragmatism is resulting in a surge of hybrid networks that mix frames, cells, and packets over carrier ATM backbones. That lets customers select the technology that makes the most sense from each location.
For example, frame relay may be the service of choice from remote sites where lower-speed and lower-priority traffic originate. But ATM may emerge as the winner for business data centers or headquarters, where higher speeds and a variety of traffic priorities exist. Traffic can be exchanged between the two services using protocol conversion devices located on the customer premise or in the carrier networks. And to customers, it looks like one seamless network.
The end of the war over frame vs. ATM is welcome news for customers, who long ago recognized the need for carriers to accommodate any number of access and service options. "I'm looking for a way to acquire more bandwidth at better pricing. How that's accomplished with the technology, I really don't care," says Larry Hardin, director of operations and communications in the IS department at Sysco Corp., an $18 billion national food distribution company in Houston. "If I can use the same bandwidth depending on time of day or day of month and combine voice and data, great."
Sysco is testing a hybrid network that uses T1-speed frame relay at remote sites and T3-speed ATM at headquarters. All traffic is sent over Sprint's ATM backbone. A key benefit is the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth, Hardin says. Customers can designate half of a T1 line to voice and half to data, but when voice traffic slows down, its portion can be reallocated to handle more data.
Despite a slow acceptance of ATM among IT managers, the technology finally has found a place in the wide area network. That differs greatly from frame relay services, for which revenue has grown substantially since the first offering appeared in 1992. Enterprise frame relay networks now handle more traffic and more locations, leaving managers searching for higher speeds and a way to manage traffic types that flow across the network. That's where ATM fits in.
ATM boasts superior scalability and the ability to prioritize traffic via quality-of-service parameters. But the service typically has been too costly and complex to use throughout an entire network. Customers wanted a way to use ATM in key, high-volume sites, and frame relay in the rest of the business network.
But for years, carriers were loath to mix protocols. They tried to push customers into one camp--either end-to-end ATM or frame relay. Why? It was easier for carriers to manage and simpler to bill.
During the past two years, industry forums have coordinated specifications for interoperability between frames, cells, and IP packets, in which software converts the protocol to the desired format. Carriers have merged their own frame and ATM networks, and the billing and back-end systems that support them.
MCI WorldCom, like its competitors, says there has been unprecedented demand for hybrid networks during the past year: "Customers are experiencing increased growth, and they need to evolve from a purely frame network to combine frame and ATM," says Roberta Myers, On-Net and access product marketing director for MCI WorldCom.
Whether this demand actually has escalated in the past year or the carriers finally have taken note of age-old requests is open to debate. What has happened is that carriers have gotten more focused on selling hybrid networks through their integrated access initiatives, which lets customers send various traffic over a single access line.
Customers are responding to those efforts because hybrid networks usually save them money. They can keep frame relay, running at 56 Kbps, to 1.5 Mbps (or in some cases 45 Mbps) at remote sites. Protocol overhead and monthly service fees remain lower than ATM, and premises equipment doesn't need to be upgraded. By selectively adding ATM to high-volume sites, customers can prioritize traffic and assign bandwidth to appropriate applications, minimizing wasted capacity.
"If you have a 100-site frame relay network, and you merge with another company or revamp some applications or a data center and decide that remote sites needs to go above T1, that's a good time to think about ATM," says Peggy Arnone, Sprint's group manager for advanced data services product management.
It's tough to pinpoint actual savings because the carriers discount prices depending on the contract. Monthly tariffed rates from AT&T, for example, are $278 for a 256-Kbps frame relay circuit and $1,310 for a 512-Kbps circuit. A 45-Mbps ATM port costs $9,975 a month.
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