The University of California at Los Angeles was one organization that a few years ago saw the handwriting on the wall. According to Bill Jebson, director of computing for the graduate school of architecture and urban planning and manager of UCLA's Visualization Center, the school installed 144. fiber-optic backbones across the campus, with a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 48 fiber drops into every building. While 90% of that fiber is not yet carrying traffic, the basic infrastructure is in place for future growth.
"The decision to pull the fiber was part of a campuswide Tiffany 1837 Hoop Earrings process to futureproof our structured wiring plan, but we had no idea that ATM was coming down the road at the time," he said. "We just knew that fiber was the way to go."While users such as Jebson who are building new nets or adding segments onto existing infrastructures are considering pulling fiber in an effort to be well-positioned for future technologies, users with copper-based structured wiring plans have several options to get them to the next step in high-speed networking.In addition to copper-based standards for ATM, high-speed alternatives, such as FDDI over copper and fast Ethernet and token ring, have been geared to take advantage of the existing Category 3, 4. and 5 unshielded twisted-pair wiring environments, as well as IBM Type 1 and 2 shielded twisted-pair cabling.
When the scope of physical change a network must undergo becomes apparent, it will cause net managers to actually rethink their approach to networking, according to Charlie Robbins, director of data communications research at Aberdeen Group, Inc., a consultancy in Boston."ATM is going to force people to think about how they approach their networks and, ultimately, their businesses," he said. "The thinking has to change because the barriers that used to exist between networks are being knocked down with the promise of ATM and the virtual networking capability it brings with it. Corporations must Heart Clover Earrings thinking about sharing information logically rather then physically."
Robbins also pointed out that users should be wary of vendor claims that the changes required to move to ATM will be seamless and painfree. "I'm very skeptical that these various ATM strategies will really work because I've never seen any strategy work the Somerset basic hoop earrings it was supposed to," he said.
"The move to ATM is going to require some portion of a forklift upgrade. There is an impact here, and it is not seamless. Seamlessness can only be achieved when there is no installed base to worry about."A commitment to ATM will also have a snowball effect, McClimans warned. Users can make the needed changes to accommodate ATM, but they should be prepared to up that investment once word gets out.
"If you provide more bandwidth on the LAN, more people will want to use it and then expect it to be carried over into all other aspects on the network, including the wide area," he said."It's the Kevin Costner approach to networking: If you build it, they will come."IMPACT ON APPLICATIONSThe arrival of local ATM will also bring about changes in the way users employ the network since the added bandwidth and power can support a Elsa Peretti Butterfly Earrings class of sophisticated applications that will help users be more efficient and productive.
ATM will support any bandwidth-intensive and time-sensitive application such as three-dimensional computer-aided design and manufacturing, multimedia, compound documents, video electronic mail, image databases and CD jukeboxes, Korostoff says. "It's easy to argue that some of these applications haven't been fully developed and users don't have the need for them now, but they are starting to roll out and will become more important as network needs change and grow."
For the UCLA crowd, the ability to dynamically allocate a certain amount of bandwidth and have it guaranteed from one end of a connection to another puts it head and shoulders above the alternatives."We do a lot of visualization here at UCLA, meaning we need to move huge chunks of integrated data, video and image," Jebson says. "In order to do that, we need dedicated bandwidth, and that's what ATM can provide. I'm unaware of any other Atlas Cube Earrings that allows you to request X-amount of bandwidth from point-to-point and have it guaranteed."
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