WorldCom, Inc. officially revealed its plans to build its first Metropolitan Area Exchange (MAE) based solely on ATM at ComNet '98.
MAE-Central, WorldCom's new Tier 1 MAE, today is under construction in Dallas. MAE-Central will be equipped with three Cisco Systems, Inc. StrataCom BPX ATM switches by the end of February with services expected to be available by the end of the quarter, said Dan Lasater, vice president of broadband applications at WorldCom.
WorldCom also is upgrading MAE-East and MAE-West, its other two Tier 1 MAEs, with BPX switches. Today, both sites are based on Digital Equipment Corp.'s FDDI GIGAswitches. WorldCom will continue to maintain its FDDI switches while also bringing its ATM-based services online, Lasater said.
But these two technologies will not be interconnected, said principal MAE architect Steve Feldman. "Its exceedingly complicate" to link the FDDI services and the ATM services, Feldman said.
WorldCom is not deploying any Gigabit Ethernet technology, as originally reported, Feldman said.
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