Distributed applications need
increasingly more bandwidth, and the explosion of Internet use is
driving many LAN architectures to the limit. Voice communications have
increased significantly, with more reliance being placed on
centralized voice mail systems for verbal communications. The network
is the critical tool for information flow. Networks are being required
to cost less, yet support the emerging applications and larger number
of users with increased performance.
Until now, local- and wide-area
communications have remained logically separate. In the LAN, bandwidth
is free and connectivity is limited only by hardware and
implementation costs. In the WAN, bandwidth is the overriding cost,
and delay-sensitive traffic such as voice has remained separate from
data.
Internet applications such as voice and
real-time video require better, more predictable LAN and WAN
performance. These multimedia applications are fast becoming an
essential part of the business productivity toolkit. As companies begin to consider implementing new intranet-based, bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications-such as video training, videoconferencing, and voice over IP, the impact of these applications on the existing networking infrastructure will become a serious concern.
For example, if a company has relied on
its corporate network for business-traffic and wants to integrate an
video-training application, the network must be able to provide
guaranteed QoS (quality of service). This QoS must deliver the multimedia
traffic, but does not allow it to interfere with the business-critical
traffic. Consequently, network designers need greater flexibility in
solving multiple internetworking problems without creating multiple
networks or writing off existing data communication investments.
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