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By David Rohde
Network World, 09/27/99

Here's a scenario followed by a pop quiz, so listen up. A carrier comes to you with a proposal for a hot new "integrated access service" in which a single box on the customer premises aggregates all your traffic types - voice, data and Internet access. "Great," you say. "Now I can take advantage of some of that convergence everyone's been talking about."

So you buy the service, the carrier installs the box, the system runs smoothly - and a month later your telecom administrator bursts into your office and throws a phone bill on your desk with all the same call-by-call long-distance tolls you thought you were getting rid of.

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Do you: A) Chew the carrier representative out; B) Refuse to pay the carrier until it removes the toll charges; or C) Click over to www.monster.com and start searching for your next job.

Sorry, the most likely answer is C.

What went wrong? Well, maybe you didn't pay close enough attention to the words. (We told you to listen up!) Today what passes for convergence is usually integrated access - note that term carefully - and not an integrated carrier backbone that would really give you a single, unified network.

Before you buy, look carefully at the carrier's network design. Quite likely, all the carrier is doing is putting several traffic types on a single T-1 access line. Once that line hits the central office, there's a three-way fork in the road. A digital access and cross-connect system (DACS) splits the voice traffic to a traditional telephone switch, your frame relay traffic to a frame or ATM switch, and Internet traffic to an IP backbone.

If that's what you see, all you've got are three separate services - same as before. Except maybe now all the bills arrive in the same overnight package.

Welcome to the world of integrated access, in which literally dozens of carriers and box manufacturers are slugging it out for your business. Your challenge: figuring out how to save money and reduce complexity.

Your best tool: knowledge of exactly what equipment each carrier is purporting to put in your data center or building common space. Understanding what customer premises equipment (CPE) you'll be using will make it a lot easier to figure out what kind of service you're really getting.

The 1-2-3s of IADs

There are basically three types of gear that vendors tout as integrated access devices (IAD). The first type is based on traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM), though now multiplexer makers incorporate routing in their boxes rather than just offering V.35 interfaces to routers plus Ethernet ports and PBX links.

User organizations ordinarily don't go out and buy TDM IADs. Instead, competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC) snap up these boxes, install them on the customer premises, attach them to a T-1 line and give the whole arrangement a service name. Sometimes legacy carriers do the same thing, though you'll have to ask to find out. You'll find these setups as services such as SingleT from data specialist Intermedia Communications, PowerFlex T-1 from the 15-city CLEC GST Telecommunications and FlexGrow from incumbent local powerhouse GTE.

The second type of IAD essentially is a frame relay access device (FRAD) with voice capability. This device, known as a voice FRAD, is more often bought by enterprises and less often taken up by carriers as the basis for a service.

But now the third category - ATM-based IADs - are popping up more frequently on customer premises anchoring carrier services that promote all kinds of benefits while keeping the dreaded words "asynchronous transfer mode" sotto voce. These IADs are essentially small ATM boxes that concentrate voice, video and data, in some cases eliminating the PBX and router. They make services such as Sprint's Integrated On-Demand Network (ION) and AT&T's Integrated Network Connect (INC) possible - although these services aren't available yet because neither carrier has settled on a specific platform.

Not to worry. Intermedia and others are readying similar offerings. And in one case, ATM IADs, paired with compatible equipment at the central office, will be the basis for a carrier's entire product line. Tampa, Fla., start-up 2nd Century Communications says it is set to launch a service based entirely on a managed ATM device.

Interestingly, for all the talk about ION and INC, what the carriers offer in the way of integrated access is the first type - TDM-based services. For example, AT&T actively promotes CerfTone, a voice and IP T-1 access service using the SlimLine product from veteran IAD provider Premisys Communications.

CerfTone is available whereas INC isn't, but be aware that it is surprisingly bare-bones. Originated by CLEC Teleport Communications Group, which AT&T bought last year, CerfTone offers no frame relay access. Instead, the service merely eliminates the requirement for buying separate dedicated access lines for voice and Internet access.

Because of their limitations, TDM-based integrated access services draw derision from the ATM device vendors and service providers. Some of them even object to the word "integrated" in the TDM service market.

"There are lots of service providers out there calling their services integrated access, but really what they're doing is bundling separate services on one facility out to the customer premises," says Vince Rocca, chief technology officer at 2nd Century. "It's not true integration because there's no sharing of bandwidth among the separate services."

A true IAD should allow for dynamic bandwidth allocation, under which any part of the T-1 could be used for any application, Rocca explains. "When a person is off-hook, that means that bandwidth should be available to Internet users," he adds.

The management of these networks is also not necessarily integrated, neither for the carrier nor the user. "You might have to go from one cloud to another cloud" to follow the trail of traffic, says Ladan Mestchian, an analyst who specializes in convergence issues with market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) in Framingham, Mass.

Many carriers sell TDM-based integrated access services on the basis of a single bill combining voice and data charges. But except for small businesses with no dedicated network staff, that's not enough of a benefit to entice corporate users, critics charge. For example, 2nd Century will offer a unified bill, but that's not the basis of its marketing pitch. "This one-bill thing is totally overhyped," says Charlotte Baker, 2nd Century's vice president of marketing. "You either have to compete on price or functionality."

The routing advantage

Part of the confusion in defining integrated access is because some of the TDM IADs evolved from older channel banks, becoming true IADs only when they added IP routing capability in hardware or software, or V.35 connections to separate routers. And according to some in the industry, even that's not enough to qualify for the term "integrated access," which ATM partisans say implies dynamic bandwidth allocation.

"They've basically stolen the term "integrated access device' from the packet world," says Jay Shuler, director of marketing for Mariposa Technology, a Petaluma, Calif., maker of an ATM-based IAD called the ATX-100. "That's given them an aura of greater sophistication than they really have."

But there are distinctions among this group and quite a number of satisfied customers, as well.

Two of the original IAD device vendors - Premisys and Carrier Access Corp. (CAC) - date to the early 1990s. Today, these two split the largest share of carrier contracts - CAC with installations at MCI WorldCom customer sites and Premisys at AT&T and many CLEC customer sites.

But in more recent years, the company that has been making the biggest splash has been Vina Technologies in Fremont, Calif. Vina made its mark by adding IP routing capability directly into the device, eliminating the need for a V.35 connection to a separate router. The company really began making its move with CLECs in 1997. Vina's T-1 Integrator - a pizza-box-sized device - then became the basis of Intermedia's SingleT service, which Intermedia began promoting heavily.

One of Intermedia's first customers for the SingleT service was Fife Florida Electric Supply, which installed a Vina T-1 Integrator in November 1997. Within three days, Fife Florida converted some telephone trunks and a bank of modems into a T-1 line. Then it parceled the T-1 into a 256K bit/sec Internet access line and dedicated outbound and inbound voice access.

canida"At the time, Intermedia was the only company that was even beta-testing a product that could put your voice and data together," says Rick Canida, MIS manager for the Tampa company.

Later this year, Fife Florida will carve out another 128K bit/sec for a frame relay connection to 10 branch offices. But for now, the SingleT connection is enabling an entirely Web-based order-entry system in which contractors can place orders directly into Fife Florida's loading system.

"The contractor market works a lot on weekends," Canida says. "Our contractors can place their orders on Sunday evening, and it can be on our truck on Monday morning." Intermedia manages the Vina box remotely, and because it has built-in IP routing, "there's no need to have that $7,000 Cisco router," he adds.

The cost turnaround has been dramatic. In 1997, Fife Florida pulled in $24 million in revenue and typically spent $5,000 to $5,500 per month on voice telephony as well as outbound and 800-type data tolls for modem access. This year, Fife Florida is on target for $32 million in revenue but is spending only $2,900 per month for the T-1, "Net access and local and long-distance voice.

Keeping your carrier's costs down

Older IAD vendors, such as Premisys, also had to play catch-up on remote management, particularly for changes in the user's choice of how many of a T-1's 24 channels to devote to Internet access. After all, in order for carriers to keep the price of the service attractive, they can't be blowing their own budget on service calls. "Once you make a CPE installation, it costs [a carrier] $350 to $500 every time they have to send someone out," says Sab Gosal, Vina's senior product manager.

Only this past summer did Premisys introduce the Managed SlimLine with remote SNMP management from AT&T and other affiliated carriers' network operations centers. Now, finally, "you don't need a truck roll," Mestchian says.

Another limitation: Premisys' SlimLine, and thus AT&T's CerfTone and similar services, can't do frame relay. But analysts don't dismiss the ability of these kinds of integrated access services to hang on into the future. "There's a lot of analog voice out there," says Kristen Flinn, an analyst with The Yankee Group in Boston. "Users who need integrated access are going to need it with a device that can handle analog voice."

There are some CLECs - even those that support frame relay on integrated access - that are careful not to preach revolution.

For example, Vancouver, Wash.-based GST integrates access traffic over a single T-1 line via a Telco Systems Access45. Once the traffic hits the central office, a DACS splits it between a Nortel Networks DMS 500 telephony switch and a Nortel Passport ATM switch for frame relay service, with Internet traffic in turn handed off to an ISP. From there, the three types of services are handled separately.

GST officials make no pretensions that the service - called PowerFlex T-1 - is going to revolutionize WAN services. "It saves the customer from having to pay for three separate local loops," says Heather Qualey, PowerFlex T-1product manager.

But some of the real cost savings may come from emerging ATM-based services. 2nd Century is banking on the fact that it's not using a Lucent or Nortel telephony switch, but rather a Convergent ATM switch and gateway to terminate all services.

"Instead of having a $6 million to $7 million switch, we have a $500,000 to $600,000 switch," Rocca says.

With Vina's new ATM-based Multiservice Xchange IAD on the customer premises, 2nd Century will undercut existing T-1 Internet access prices, though it may meet its match in digital subscriber line offerings. For example, 2nd Century will offer Internet access at a minimum of 128K bit/sec, but burstable up to 1,280K bit/ sec, for a price of $250 to $450, plus a long-distance toll charge of 8.5 to 9.5 cents per minute.

The CPE price also can increase the cost of an integrated-access service, even if the user doesn't own the equipment. For example, to some extent the new generation of ATM-based access devices emulates the multiservice capabilities of Nortel's Passport ATM switch, which for several years has helped some large enterprises run voice over ATM and is one of the options in Sprint ION. But pricing for the Passport starts at $20,000. The T-1 voice module alone costs $22,000, with additional cards of various types running at least $10,000.

By contrast, a fully configured Mariposa box lists at $20,000, Shuler says. That has made it attractive to users such as Virginia Tech University, which is part of a statewide ATM network called Net.Work Virginia.

On the Virginia Tech campus, an ATX-100 sits between a PBX and one DS-1 port of a FORE Systems ATM switch, says Barry Linkous, telecom engineer at the university. Through compression and bandwidth allocation, the ATX-100 can feed 48 simultaneous phone calls through the ATM WAN to two other campuses in the state, eliminating long-distance tolls.

Still, the ATX-100 has to be classified as an IAD, not an enterprise ATM switch. It has only one User-to-Network Interface (UNI), so it can't be the hub of an enterprise network. But the hub could be any ATM enterprise or carrier switch supporting the ATM Forum's UNI 3.0 or 3.1 standards, Shuler says.

Other devices are based on frame relay, making them problematic because they require the use of permanent virtual circuits. The costs associated with creating fully meshed frame relay networks can be prohibitive, 2nd Century's Rocca says. The only alternative users have if they want to use frame relay IADs in a fully converged net with a typical star frame relay configuration is to tandem the voice calls through the central site, adding to potential latency.

For users, much depends on where their networks are already going. Because integrated access only does so much, carriers tend to segment their offers, and TDM services are popular among smaller enterprises. Perhaps that explains why AT&T really has three integrated-access services - besides INC and CerfTone, it also has a little-known frame relay-based service called Managed Multimedia Networking Service.

Perhaps it also explains why it sometimes seems that integrated access is more popular at the bottom end of the market than the top. After all, network professionals at some of the largest enterprises have already passed that quiz you saw at the beginning . . . and they're still waiting for the converged service that makes sense for them.

Related links

Sprint chief acknowledges transitions in ION, Global One
Sprint Chairman William Esrey is no longer calling his crown-jewel next-generation network, Sprint ION, the unique savior of networking, or claiming that his myriad domestic and international partnerships are problem-free. Network World Fusion, 5/21/99.

AT&T service architecture ups the ante
Tom Nolle looks at AT&T's INC service. Network World, 2/15/99.

DSL meets dial tone: The next communications revolution
Kevin Fong looks at DSL-based IADs. Network World, 9/20/99.

Voice over DSL sounds promising
Network World Tech Update on Next-Generation IADs. Network World, 8/2/99.

FlowPoint's 2200V integrated access device
Quick-take look at this IAD. Network World, 4/19/99.

Upstart carrier keys on convergence
2nd Century overview. Network World, 6/21/99.

Nortel rolls out convergence gear
Nortel Networks has announced a switch that enables branch offices to converge voice and data over frame relay, ATM and IP WAN connections. Network World, 4/30/99.

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