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Chapter 8
ATM and the Real World

Questions Answered in This Chapter

What are the real ATM benefits?

Who are the U.S. ATM players?

What does ATM cost?

Who are the ATM customers?

What hurdles must ATM leap to be the network technology of the world?

What is the future of ATM?

Introduction

This chapter provides a more in-depth look at ATM transmission features as found in the real world. Every ATM service provider requires a user to sign a long-term contract, typically three years. There are great differences in the features and services offered by the service providers. Also, the ATM access charges vary greatly among the service providers. This chapter looks at the data transmission market, where ATM is in that market, and where ATM is headed. Also, ATM service features as offered by the various service providers are given an in-depth treatment. Dont sign an access contract until you have read this chapter!

Explosions and the Growth of ATM


Figure 8-1.  Networking explosion

Some brave souls are forecasting as many as 55 million people working remotely and over 300 million people with access to the Internet by the year 2000. Working remotely in this instance means working at a location other than the employing companys premises. Remote office, remote access, remote management, remote diagnostics, remote learning (distance learning), remote switching system, and the list goes on. As we crowd around our desktops spending more and more time with virtual space, we are becoming, no pun intended, a “remote society.”


Figure 8-2.  Internet explosion

We are becoming “virtualized” at an ever increasing speed. Virtual in this context means “almost, but not quite.” Virtual memory, virtual networks, virtual workplaces, virtual stores, virtual routers, virtual classrooms, virtual disks, and the list goes on. We are becoming—again, no pun intended—a “virtual society.” Virtually everything imaginable soon becomes virtualized if the trend continues at the current rate. What waits for us at the moment we become “virtual” humans? Wits, pundits, and soothsayers all have something to say about the end result. However, it seems almost as if we are compelled to follow the path we are on to whatever final reward, good or bad, awaits us. Remoting all the things that people once did in close association with each other in something called work groups and virtualizing everything we can get our hands on has given rise for the need to network like crazy. Information, and entertainment, must be easily accessible to all the “virtually remote” inhabitants of the globe.

Every networked computer and every computer that connects to the Internet are candidates for ATM service, now. No waiting, no kidding. Cant afford to buy DS-3 ATM access? No sweat. As soon as telecommunications resellers figure out they can buy PVCs and resell the bandwidth to the public and private sectors in smaller increments, we will be off on another wild telecommunications technology ride.


Figure 8-3.  ATM explosion

ATM service is still in its infancy. Currently, the approximately 500 worldwide ATM users are corporate big-league hitters who are networking far-flung corporate sites into continental WANs and worldwide GANs and large government agencies. In 1996 the Defense Information Services Network (DISN) awarded an ATM contract to AT&T for ATM transmission and MCI for ATM switching services. The contract specifies ATM services for 106 sites in the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii. The initial contract requires 120 DS-3 ports. As Big Business and Bigger Government climb aboard the ATM train, ATM access prices will drop, fanning the flames of the exponential growth fire.

As ATM matures, multimedia and video-based products offered by companies will either augment or replace CATV companies mired in coaxial-based physical plants. The ATM market focus will swing from corporate WANs and GANs to consumer products. The access speed possible with ATM-based Internet service combined with ADSL delivery to the home and small business anywhere in the world over the existing humble, copper wire physical plant, makes ATM very attractive as the pump for transporting multimedia and video-based products into every home in the world. Worldwide deregulation of telecommunications companies and markets and the hands-off attitude assumed by many governments of Internet content opens up much of the world as a market. What profit-loving, entrepreneurial company can resist such opportunity?

Two ATM factoids for the entrepreneurial readers:

Asia/Pacific is a potentially huge market for video-based products delivered over copper. Anyone traveling to Hong Kong, Singapore, etc., cannot help observing all the satellite dishes hanging from virtually every window of the skyscraper-sized apartment buildings.

Millions of households (apartment-holds?) are waiting for someone to show up with economical, video-based services.

ATM Benefits and Network Evolution

Enterprises can use ATM as the local and campus backbone technology. ATM will deliver desktop speeds of 25 Mbps and higher. Private enterprise ATM backbone networks in WANs supporting legacy and emerging technologies are a reality. See Figure 8-4 for a typical ATM WAN topology. ATM can painlessly take networks from:

  1. regional to global
  2. separated to integrated
  3. bandwidth inefficient to bandwidth efficient
  4. many platforms to fewer platforms
  5. technology driven to service driven
  6. complex to simple


Figure 8-4.  Private enterprise WAN backbone network


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