UUNet 10Plus

Wed Jul 9 21:05:11 UTC 1997

Joe,

> What I got from UUNet and the VP of our company was that it was delivered
> over a 10Mbps ATM circuit, into the Net Edge, then out via 10Mbps 
> ethernet.  We've asked for a better handoff, and they refuse to deliver
> it.

Having (briefly) alpha trialed a 10Mbps ATM / Netedge service on an
MFS Worldcom ATM service, I can state conclusively state that this
will *not* run well. In tests we managed to get a maximum of (from
memory) 3.4Mb/s (running both directions simulatenously) through
the service without it starting to drop packets. You need a decent
bursty load simulator to really hit it, but the Net Edge buffers
were a real problem. A memory upgrade on the NetEdge and them
reworking the config helped, but not much. Our solution was to remove
the NetEdge each end and plug straight into a Cisco AIP. Unsuprisingly
this worked far better (though even that has its problems).
[Those having religious objections to ATM, please excersize pluralistic
tolerance by not bothering to repeat your objections just now :-) ]

Are they implying that you can get 10Mb/s through this service without
losing packets? (even unidirectionally). I would be interested to see
this demonstrated with a traffic profile which would sit quite happilly
on a 10Mb clocked serial port (or 10/45s of a DS-3 traffic or whatever).

Alex Bligh
Xara Networks