ABSTRACT
Effectively delivering bandwidth today is more important than ever before. Networks that deliver bandwidth to users and their applications in the most efficient manner with the appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) will likely prevail over less effective bandwidth delivery schemes. Until recently, voice made up the bulk of a network’s traffic. Today, data dominates. Tomorrow’s traffic will likely be multimedia with varying levels of tolerance for loss, delay, and variation in bandwidth. Systems of the future must allow for this mixture. Clearly, the network that can most effectively satisfy the user’s requirements will ultimately provide the service at the lowest price, a key factor being the ability not to over-engineer the system when a less expensive solution will satisfy the customer. For example, the success of the frame relay service from public carriers is due to the user’s willingness to share a bandwidth pool with others and to tolerate occasional loss and delay in exchange for significantly lower data transport costs compared to DS1 (1.544 Mbps) and fractional DS1 private line service.
