[e2e] on local ethernet throughput?

[David P. Reed]

At 09:55 AM 10/29/2001 -0500, Craig Partridge wrote:

>In message <5.1.0.14.2.20011024164654.03788258 at mail.reed.com>, "David P. 
>Reed"
>writes:
>
> >If equipment companies could have ignored the ATM madness of bell-shaped
> >companies (carrier class equals ATM...), then we would have had packets
> >over DSL, and an Ethernet or IP-based authentication (like 802.1x).
>
>Modest defense of the kludgery.
>
>The carriers understand they have to deliver individual DSL lines
>back to any CLEC that resells the DSL service.  I.e. CLEC needs to be
>able to map something coming into their network as being from a particular
>customer line that they rent from the CLEC.  The carriers needed, therefore,
>some way to take a set of DSL physical lines and distribute them, flexibly,
>and individually to various CLECs.  They hit on ATM circuits as the way to
>do it -- not optimal, but not stupid either.

I was complaining about the equipment companies, not the carriers.  Yes, of 
course, there is a thought process under which this makes sense - 
especially if you think that the Internet is an aberration and what the 
primary market wants is dialup, broadband *circuits*.  The asymmetry of 
"dialup" versus "always-on" is particularly interesting because it is the 
substantive difference that nearly every new cable-modem subscriber 
notes.  And it does indeed prevent techniques like "preventative 
maintanence" where the CLEC or ILEC sends an occasional ping down the 
subscriber line so that they can schedule physical maintanence more 
efficiently by batching truckrolls to improve customer service and save on 
costs - HFC systems can do this easily.  "subscriber must dial up" on DSL 
also meant that such ideas as remote home monitoring that works fine on 
cable doesn't work at all on DSL.

These are not new ideas.  I can dig up discussions I had with senior NYNEX 
executives (NYNEX is one of the antecedents of Verizon) back in 1992 on 
this subject in regard to ISDN provisioning, as well as DSL provisioning in 
regard to data services (such as the Internet, which was nowhere near the 
center of their radar screen).  They dismissed it then as irrelevant to the 
great markets of AIN services and video dialtone.  Most of their 
information about the needs of the market seemed to come from marketing 
pitches from equipment companies, verbatim.  Not surprising since NYNEX and 
all other phone companies at that point were run by people who had little 
or no engineering knowledge themselves, and were used to just installing 
the latest and greatest from Lucent, Nortel, etc.






- David
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