ATM, Sonet are giving way to IP -- GCN

ATM, Sonet are giving way to IP

Jul 19, 2001

By Susan M. Menke

GCN Staff

JULY 19—The rise of high-speed public IP networking is making agencies' enterprise infrastructures more like those of Internet service providers, the Burton Group said yesterday.

The Salt Lake City network research firm said in a report that the change overturns 'long-held assumptions about how networks should be architected.' Large organizations and service providers alike are turning to network transport from carriers instead of maintaining their own backbones, the report said.

The trend is toward fast IP networks in place of once-dominant frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode and Synchronous Optical Network layers. Instead, networks are running IP everywhere via multiprotocol label switching. Other trends are increased use of wireless links to enterprise networks, which Burton said will become nearly ubiquitous, and voice over IP telephony among organizations' sites.

Backbone network capacity has grown so much faster than computing power, Burton said, that it is causing an 'optical arms race' in which bandwidth's per-unit price will plummet.

More information about the report appears at www.tbg.com.

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