| Cornell spends three to four times more on voice systems and lines than it does on data systems for nowhere near the comparable bandwidth. With the onslaught of requests for videoconferencing services for classrooms and for connecting remote sites, Lambert knew he had to do something radical. If a single network infrastructure carried the voice, video and data traffic, he could pool the financial resources to deliver services such as videoconferencing and voice-integrated applications along with dial tone and data. That's a textbook case for ATM, one might think; after all, ATM and its quality-of-service features were created for precisely this scenario
.
Lambert and his team discovered an odd thing--when it comes to ATM products for telephony, the vendors are asleep in the back of the classroom. Plus, deploying an integrated voice and data ATM network end to end would mean that all of Cornell's departments
would have to move simultaneously to ATM. So how do you get ATM quality of service while preserving your existing Ethernet network?
Lambert and his team, Dick Cogger and Scott Brim, worked the problem. What emerged was Cells In Frames (CIF). Put in a CIF attachment device instead of an Ethernet switch, and the attachment device will take care of the quality-of-service issues for the Ethernet devices.
CIF may well be the last stand for end-to-end ATM-based quality of service, as ATM faces considerable opposition
from the school whose crib notes read: "switched Fast Ethernet, IPv6 and RSVP." Lambert does not believe the IP-based solution will scale--choosing that route sacrifices voice and thus a whole new class of applications that more naturally integrate telephony, he says, throwing everyone back to building separate net
works.
Sacrificing economy of scale could have a high price on a grander scope. "We need to redirect some of the money spent on telephony to find the key that unlocks quality high-speed broadband services everywhere. If you spend that money differently, in a way that integrates technology and does not replicate it, we easily get the wherewithal of an advanced telecom architecture while preserving accessibility to every segment of society," he says.
Contribution Past 12 Months: Finding a cost-effective way to deploy integrated data and telephony, using Cells in Frames.
Next 12 Months: The integration of telephony and data.
Millennium Forecast: The integration of telephony and data, which will happen even more quickly if technologies such as Cells In Frames hap
pens.
Millennium Disturbance: The technologies are changing faster than our ability to build and deploy them. There's a real human and economic limit to dealing with the pace of change. Car: Mazda MX-6 Turbo
|
REPORTS
ANALYTICS
Follow 
