WAN Services /

BONDING your way to more bandwidth

By Fred McClimans
Network World Fusion, 06/25/01

Imagine a world where you can order as much or as little bandwidth whenever you want it. Now, imagine a world where you can double your bandwidth with the click of a mouse at guaranteed quality of service and all within seconds. Sound like the next wave of technology? Well, it's not. It's our old friends frame relay and inverse muxing.

Do you remember the Bandwidth On Demand (BONDING) consortium? I do. I was there at the first meeting when we even had self-provisioning (well, actually you used an inverse mux to dial-up multiple private connections at fractional or even T-1 speeds). But as we all know, the flexible bandwidth offered by these services never really came to fruition. And if we are not careful, the present wave of flexible provisioning services could end up in the same situation - all hype and no delivery.

In order for instant bandwidth to work this time around, we need to cross some hurdles. We need a new hardware infrastructure at the customer access point. After all, there is no way you can provision 10 gigabits of bandwidth if all you have is a DSL modem. We also need to build a new cable/wire infrastructure solid enough to handle all those heavy data rates.

Think of a superhighway ramp to everybody's doorstep and at the same performance level as the main highway. Now, think of a tollgate on everybody's driveway making sure they are slowed to their regular "paid rate" before they hit the road. Want faster connections? All you have to do is drop more money into the toll bucket on the way out. If this sounds like the old burst-on-demand scenario, just remember that the future will involve faster, more flexible self-provisioned services.

We need to spend a ton of money on new CPE, carrier and cabling to make this wave of the future a reality, not to mention a breakthrough into the residential/consumer market. No wonder the vendors are all abuzz over this idea. But if we're not careful, if we end up spending the money and not getting it right this time, there will likely be a lot fewer service and equipment providers around.