ISPs may reap benefit of Gigabit Ethernet

Tampa, Fla. - Bill Manning warned a throng of Internet service providers recently that the public facilities many ISPs employ to connect with one another are choking under enormous loads. But he feels Gigabit Ethernet may help ease congestion.

Manning, a project manager at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, told attendees at the recent North American Network Operators Group meeting here that an injection of Gigabit Ethernet switches would clear blockages at network access points (NAP) and metropolitan-area exchanges (MAE). NAPs and MAEs serve as public interconnection sites where even the smallest of ISPs exchange with other providers.

The Gigabit Ethernet switches would sit on-site at the NAP or MAE premises taking in traffic from IP routers. The switches would be interconnected to form a high-speed backbone over which the IP traffic would flow.

Such an upgrade would exponentially increase the bandwidth public ISP exchanges currently support and, in the process, could improve response times for end users.

Gigabit Ethernet will be the panacea for public exchanges, Manning said. They will be able to attach more users without being constrained by their on-premises technology.

But some large ISPs are convinced that public exchanges have outlived their usefulness, and they are shedding them for private peering links. The links allow large ISPs to better regulate the traffic that finds its way onto the provider's network.

"Sure, Gigabit Ethernet will make a shared interconnect viable for people who use that model," said John Curran, chief technology officer at BBN Communications, Inc. "But let's be frank. Gigabit Ethernet used in private interconnects will still let you handle orders of magnitude greater traffic."

The flip side of Curran's argument for private interconnects is they allow only the largest of ISPs to peer with one another. That, in turn, relegates smaller players to public interconnection points and forces many of them to pay for transit services across large ISP networks.

One public interconnect provider, MFS Datanet, which operates MAE-East and MAE-West - two of the largest public interconnects - is eyeing ATM to remedy congestion woes.

ATM appeals to MFS Datanet largely because the company is more familiar with it from its carrier business, according to Matt Parnell, senior product manager in charge of the MAEs.

Like other public interconnects, the MAEs use Digital Equipment Corp. GigaSwitch FDDI switches, as well as shared Ethernet access.

Upgrade interest

Gigabit Ethernet start-ups said they are beginning to get feelers from ISPs and interconnect providers to provide switch upgrades. George Prodan, vice president of marketing at Extreme Networks, Inc., said his company's Summit switches will establish a gigabit backbone at interconnect sites and pull traffic off ISP routers that skim data off the 'Net.

Moreover, the vendor will offer its ExtremeWare, which will enable users to set policy-based quality of service.

Bobby Johnson, Foundry Networks, Inc. president and CEO, said Gigabit Ethernet will prevail at public interconnects. It lets you keep Ethernet frame sizes, and you don't worry about the overhead of ATM, he said. ISPs and their interconnect points will wind up enjoying massive bandwidth.