ATM Wide-Area Networks (was: sell shell accounts?)

Wed Jul 24 00:29:44 UTC 1996

| At a certain point, some of these arguments about ATM efficiency sound a bit
| like saying FDDI is terrible because 4B/5B encoding is
| only 80% efficient.

But FDDI has a *great* admission-control scheme.

However, I almost concede your point. :) [*]

| I think a more interesting measure of the value of ATM
| versus other wide-area technologies is some sort of
| measure of throughput per dollar.

No kidding.

	Sean.

P.S.: [*] almost, because in an application where one is
      using ATM as a single point-to-point PVC along a
long-haul trunk that is to be used essentially exclusively
for IP traffic, the cell tax seems really excessive.
Given the movement towards cisco's packet-over-SONET, 
should that work and should others implement similar and
preferably interoperable point-to-point interfaces, I will
have to withdraw my almost-concession, except in cases
where people _really_ want to do point-to-multipoint stuff.