Conference Analysis

Volume #5 CAN #425July 15, 1998 by Barbara C. McNurlin and Laurence I. Press

Conference AnalysisIn-depth reports on leadingIT conferences

Barbara C. McNurlinLaurence I. Press

Networld+Interop98Presented byZD COMDEX andForumsMay 4–8, 1998Las Vegas, Nevada

[This is the first in a two-partseries covering theexpansive Networld+Interop98 show—Ed.]

Introduction

Networld+Interop is billed asthe “definitive networking event.”Formerly, Interop and Networld

were two separate conventions.They combined a few years ago.

Networld+Interop is aboutone-fifth the size of COMDEXFall. That, alone, is a positive,not a negative. It is aimedspecifically at networkingprofessionals. If that is yourinterest, this is your show. Inaddition, the number of exhibits ismanageable—unlike COMDEX.The exhibit floor can actually becovered in the three days of theshow.

In addition to the exhibits, theshow included four conferences.

The General Conferencecontained 40 sessions in seventracks:

• Network management andoperations

• High speed routing andswitching

• Intranets and networkedapplications

Table of Contents

Introduction................................... 1Keynote 1:Taking the Internet to the NextLevel............................................. 2Quality of Service (QoS)Economics 101 ............................. 4Tomorrow’s Call Center .............. 10The Newest Value Added ServiceOfferings from Carriers, ISPs,and CLECs ................................ 15Conference Comparison............... 21

Conference Analysis #425

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• Media

• IP design and deployment

• Security, case studies, andindustry test results

The ISP Forum was aimed atInternet Service Providers andnetwork managers. It addressedsuch subjects as

• New technologies

• Business issues

• New services forcustomers

• The future of the industry

CommUnity explored theconvergence of technologies infour tracks:

• Data, voice and videoapplications for theenterprise

• Converged platforms forenterprise networks

• The role of networkservice providers

• Integrated transport fordata, voice, and video

The Engineers Conferencefocused on:

• The latest developments infinal-mile access

• Systems performance

• Network routing andswitching

• Various technologies

On the exhibit floor, a few ofthe several themes jumped out atus.

Asynchronous DigitalSubscriber Line (ADSL) is afairly new technology forproviding megabit speeds overlocal loop copper wire. It is nowtouted as a contender for “lastmile” network access from homesand offices. A number of boothshad ADSL products. While trialshave been running for five yearsand implementations are juststarting. Potential uses includevideo conferencing, distancelearning, audio/video streaming,and telemedicine.

In his keynote speech, JohnSidgmore of UUNET predictedthat all major telcos (includinghis) would roll out ADSL thisyear.

Gigabit Ethernets have arrivedfor short distances (3-5kilometers) and metropolitandistances (50 km). They areaimed at bursty traffic (50-150meg files, such as CAD or videofiles) around office complexesand within cities.

• Virtual Private Networks(VPN)

VPNs use tunneling toprovide securetransmissions (viaencrypted messages andauthenticated users) overthe Internet. They weretouted at many booths asthe future point-to-pointtransmission medium for e-commerce, telecommuting,remote project teams, andcommunities of interest.

The importance of VPNswere mentioned in severalsessions reviewed in thisissue of CAN.

• Quality of Service (QoS).

The Internet is called a“best effort”communication medium.Delivery cannot beguaranteed. QoS, on theother hand, will guaranteeservice delivery times orbandwidth for differentclasses of service. Theinitial offerings provideclasses of service byrunning IP over ATM,using the ATM classes ofservice capabilities.

QoS is the topic of one ofthe sessions reviewed inthis issue of CAN (see page4).

• Voice, fax, and video overIP.

There were many diverseofferings in this arena.Internet telephony servers,for example, are nowavailable to handleinteractive voice response,voice messaging, speechrecognition, and on and on.

The fact that Rob Glaser ofRealNetworks was selectedas a keynote speaker(reviewed below) indicatesthe growing importance ofvoice over IP.

Keynote 1: Taking theInternet to the NextLevel

John Sidgmore, CEO ofUUNET Technologies andVice Chairman and Chief


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Operating Officer ofWorldCom.

Since Mr. Sidgmore joinedUUNET in 1994, annual revenuehas grown from $7 million tonearly a $1 billion. In 1995UUNET went public, and in 1996they merged with MFSCommunications in a deal valuedat $2 billion. Later that year,they were acquired by WorldComfor $14 billion. Now they plan tomerge with MCI in a deal valuedat over $40 billion.

Mr. Sidgmore feels we are inthe middle of the biggest changein the history of communications,and are stretching all theboundaries. It is like the dawn oftransportation and aeronautics atthe beginning of this century.

The change will not abate. Itis accelerating. No matter howyou measure the Internet—hosts,traffic volume, users, networksconnected, etc.—all charts showthe same rapid, exponentialgrowth. The really rapidacceleration began with the Webin 1994. This is a still a veryyoung industry with a long way togrow.

Even the PC industry wasnothing compared to the Internet.Moore's law says that ICs willdouble in capacity roughly every18 months, but Internetbandwidth demand doubles everythree and a half months, whichmeans around 1,000 percentannual growth. Mr. Sidgmorebelieves this is unprecedented.

Voice traffic grows at about 8percent annually. At the presentgrowth rates, Internet will be halfof the world bandwidth by the

year 2000. After 100 years ofdeploying voice infrastructure, itwill have been overtaken by theInternet in only a few years. By2003, the Internet will be morethan 90 percent of all bandwidthin the world. A year later it willbe more than 99 percent Voicewill become irrelevant, a nichemarket.

This represents a scaling andgrowth challenge that isunprecedented in history. AsUUNET engineers say "if youare not scared by this, you do notunderstand."

Some people expect thegrowth rate to slow down, butMr. Sidgmore feels one can makethe opposite case. Currentbandwidth growth has comesimply from adding newsubscribers, but new high-bandwidth, multimediaapplications will push demandeven faster than today. UUNETwill continue to build bandwidthaggressively on the assumptionthat this is the case.

The Internet is the firstubiquitous network, giving youthe ability to access everyone—customers, suppliers, etc. Thiswill revolutionize manyindustries, includingtelecommunications. The oldorder that has ruledtelecommunications for over 100years is being overturned by twofactors. The first is revolutionaryde-regulation around the world.New players like Quest can enterthe market. The old companieswill be able to stall a bit, but notstop this wave.

The Internet is the secondforce driving change in the

telecommunications industry,again with free-for-allcompetition. The bottom line isthat the Internet is much cheaperthan the switched-circuittelephone network, and it isimproving at a faster rate,because it is attracting the bestand the brightest—the intellectualand financial capital. UUNET isgrowing as fast as it can raisecapital.

Fifty percent of theinternational minutes that getcounted as voice today areactually FAX. This is low-hanging fruit for the Internet, andit will begin moving over quicklythis year. Voice messagingapplications will also move to theInternet. The phone companiesare afraid—this is a unique timeat which the old order can beoverthrown.

The UUNET acquisition ofCompuServe and ANS was aboutthe Internet, about getting newskills and capacity. The MCIdeal is not about the Internet perse—it was about increasing theirbasic telecommunicationsnetwork capacity—in the US andinternationally.

New business-modelbreakthroughs are made possibleby the ubiquity of the Internet.Internet shopping, as exemplifiedby Amazon.com, is one. Suchbasic changes take time. (Lookhow long it took us to move toATM banking). Internetshopping will dominate because itallows the consumer to be incharge, to decide what contentthey access and when. Thecentral planning/broadcast modelwill die quickly. Also users are



increasingly untethered andmobile. Faster local access willalso cause breakthroughs, forexample, allowing much moretelecommuting.

These changes are aboutleveling the playing field. Smallcompanies can now recruit andsell globally. On the other hand,the sword cuts both ways. Agilityand speed to market win in thisworld, and the Internet will allowlarge companies to act as quicklyand offer the same good customerservice as small companies.Small companies will look big,large companies will look small,and the playing field will beleveled.

Quality and efficiency,not control of distributionchannels, will be the key to

success.

ISPs will offer new servicessuch as multicasting, FAX,extranets (VPNs), and voice overIP. Access speed will beginincreasing this year—all of thephone companies will offerDigital Subscriber Line servicethis year. Mr. Sidgmore alsopredicts that international growthrates will begin to approach thoseof the US because of de-regulation. This will also lead toan explosion in caching andmirroring.

While bandwidth is increasingvery rapidly, it is necessary toadd 1,000 percent per year just tostay even. This is from new usersand applications as discussedearlier, and computer-computertransactions which do not existtoday will be an even greaterimpetus to growth. We will also

be increasingly mobile, and havemany IP devices per person onlineat all times. Agents will becontinuously active. Traffic isalso bursty. The bottom line isthat Mr. Sidgmore does not feelwe can keep up with bandwidthdemand.

The flat price of $20 permonth will not suffice to coverthis growth because long-distance, not local access, is thebiggest problem. Today, homeusers are constrained by modemspeeds. In the future, you mayhave Asymetric DigitalSubscriber Lines providing 1Mb/sec local access, but youcannot guarantee that same rateto Germany at a low, fixed cost—it will not scale. Content must bekept locally, so caching andmirroring must grow rapidly.

On a more controversial note,Mr. Sidgmore suggested that wemight have long-distance charges.For example, you might getaccess to local content for $20per month or pay $30 per monthfor global access.

He is scared, but is alsoconfident that new technologywill save us because we aregetting new entrepreneurs, newideas, and new investment. In thefuture we will rethink networkdesign with the goal being IPfrom the start rather thantraditional telecommunication.We will also move to a purelyoptical core network, but it is stillunclear what will be between theoptical core and the IP layer—theswitches, routers and protocols,etc. (In the long run, we will haveoptical routers, but that will takesome time). This intermediate

layer will not be the sole provinceof telephone manufacturers likeLucent. Traditional IP companieslike Cisco will compete withthem, leading to rapid innovation.

Everyone's core business isthreatened. The phone companieshave a lot of capital and the IPcompanies a lot of ideas.

In summary, we mustremember that although we havehad rapid change and growth, it isnothing compared to what we canexpect in the future [because ofall of the intellectual and financialcapital that is being invested.]That, coupled with a lack ofcentral planning and regulation,promises unpredictable, explosivegrowth. In fifty years, people willlook back on this as the goldenage of communications.

Quality of Service (QoS)Economics 101

Sue Almeida, StrategicNetworks

This session presents asnapshot of quality of service(QoS) in today’s public servicesand addresses the issues facingInternet Service Providers (ISPs)in providing end-to-end QoS.

Today’s enterprises currentlymanage five separate networks,sometimes up to 30.

• A transport network forinteroffice datacommunication (framerelay, ATM),

• A separate voiceinfrastructure



• A separate infrastructurefor remote access(primarily via modems atcentral site taking remotedial-up calls)

• A video conferencingnetwork over ISDN

• A public Internetinfrastructure.

Some companies have yetanother infrastructure for runningEDI with business partners(currently EDI, but moving toInternet-based extranets).

Managing all these networksis not only expensive but is alsonot conducive to the way we willsoon be doing business.Enterprises spend two-thirds oftheir telecom budget on peopleand pipes. This model wastesboth.

• Enterprises are evolving to amodel where all users(large/small, remote/central,fixed/mobile) plug into a suiteof Internet-based services, toget:

• Public Internet access

• Remote access

• E-commerce and interactionwith customers

• Extranet (to plug in easily topartners)

• Running services betweentheir sites.

IP has become the networklayer (layer 3) convergedprotocol. Even SNA networks aremoving to an IP structure. Theevolution is happening underneaththis layer.

Drivers

From a service providerviewpoint, competition is thedriver due to deregulation aroundthe world. The ISP market hasgrown as well. The traditionalISPs are being joined by large fullservice providers, such as telcosthat have acquired ISPs or others.These new entrants offer Internetaccess as part of their overallportfolio. The ISP market has hadlow barriers of entry, so there arenow many entrants.

As a result, all serviceproviders face market shareerosion, market churn, reducedloyalty, and a margin squeeze—especially for transport-onlyservices, which have become acommodity. These business issuesdrive ISPs, so they have to comeout with new innovative serviceswhile rethinking architectures andoperational support. The currentmodel for ISPs, unfortunately,has been “the more customers youadd, the more money you lose.”So there is an effort to move tothe next generation ofinfrastructure and operationalsystems.

Strategies

The strategies for serviceproviders is to move up the valuechain, toward providing solutionsand services rather thantechnologies. There is also amove to bundled and managedservices, to take out thecomplexity of the networkinfrastructure, so that userenterprises can focus on theirbusiness.

The fast emerging publicnetwork services can be seen inthree trends:

• Internet-based virtualprivate networks (VPNs).Actually, these arealready available. LargeISPs offer extensiveremote access, intranet,and extranet servicestoday. But this isevolving.

• Tiered and customizedservices, wherecompanies can subscribeto different performanceand security levels andpay different pricesdepending on what theyneed for a given set ofusers. In a nutshell, thisis the world we areheading toward.

• Converged services,where ISPs run multipleservices, such as voiceand video as well as IP,over convergedpacketized networks. Theconvergence of voice andtelephony is unleashing aslew of value-addedservices—not just Webhosting or email—butdatabase management,service bureaus,application rental, andmost importantly, voiceover IP.

Why is all this happening?Because plain voice is becoming athin sliver of the pie, while dataand video are ramping up.Therefore, investment dollars,management attention, and R&Dare shifting to packet technology.At the same time, many digitaltechnological advances areapproaching today’s telephony



capabilities, and tomorrow will bebetter-than-telephony.

Service providers are thusoffering business users nativesubscriber services, such as IPtelephony or unified messaging,as a unified, value-added serviceoffering. When enterprises wantto run these kinds of servicesthemselves, ISPs need to have aninfrastructure that allows runningthese converged applications ontop of the public networkservices.

Getting to Internet-basedVPNs.

We need security, highperformance, performancecontrol, customer views (so thatenterprise managers can see intotheir slice of the VPN so it is nolonger a black hole), service levelagreements, and policy-basedmanagement (they cannot get to adynamic extranet view of theworld with today’s administrativeprocesses). These are the buildingblocks.

Building blocks related toquality of service are:

• Engineering a high-performance network:how well you design theinfrastructure. Today’snetworks must be lowlatency, have low packetloss on wide areatransport, non-stopavailability, low blockingrates for dial-up (toachieve a high probabilityof making a connection),very few dial-updisconnects, and highdial-up speeds. It is thesecharacteristics that form

the foundation for a highperformance network.

• Mechanisms for moredeterministic andgranular classes ofservice, quality ofservice, and quality ofaccess. Today, we havenumerous approachesvying for adoption.Numerous debates areraging, such as RSVP notbeing scalable for end-to-end QoS, while MPLS,which will beimplemented this year,can scale more. Alsobeing rolled out this yearis RSVP signaling beingmapped onto an ATMinfrastructure to useATM’s QoSmechanisms. In themeantime, we have“types of service,” whichmeans using bits in the IPpacket to set prioritiesand create classes ofservice. A number ofimplementations willappear in the middle ofthis year, 1998. Thispiece is not resolved yet,so we are not seeing thedesired level ofgranularity is serviceofferings yet. But we willtoward the end of theyear.

• Service level agreementsso that ISPs back up theirofferings with guarantees,as well as ways tomonitor performance sothat enterprises knowthey are getting what theyare paying for.

• Policy-basedmanagement, whichallows people to bemembers of manydifferent extranets, evensigning up for atemporary one to work ona six-month team project.

Today, the Internet has cometo be called “best effort” Internet.There are no performancecontrols and no security, so itprovides a best effort service.Many large service providersalready provide Internet-basedVPNs. Tunneling technologies arein place for remote access, thereare service level agreements, andthere are mechanisms to viewyour performance within yourVPN.

What is coming is class ofservice, end-to-end service, andpolicy-based management.Eventually we will have fullyinteroperable, interconnectedInternet VPNs, much as we havetoday with telephony from themany telcos around the world. Itis transparent to users, there isone-stop shopping, and a singlebill. It will take some time to getto this point on Internet-basedservices due to technical issues(security and QoS), but moreimportantly, business processesamong ISPs, such as billing,provisioning, and settlement.

Getting to converged networks.

Today’s service providernetworks are essentially lots ofnetwork clouds:

• The telephony-centricnetwork—circuitswitching over traditional



transmissioninfrastructure

• An evolving transportnetwork for data—framerelay and leased ATMover multi-service ATMbackbone are verycommon today.

• Multiple Internetnetworks—public andspecial purpose-built onefor VPNs, where“purpose-built” meansengineered for higherperformance. Tomorrowit will mean providingQoS as well.

With the advances in packetswitching and leveraging voiceover packets, we are seeing thetraditional transmissioninfrastructure moving to thismulti-service environment. Thereare also some ISPs that arewrapping their IP services aroundan ATM core. At the same time,another wave of technology isaimed at pure IP over Sonet oroptical technologies. There is aswing toward leveraging fewerinfrastructures and packetswitching infrastructures runningover networks designed for highperformance for data andpacketized voice.

Mark Akass, Equant

Equant is a $1 billioncompany with 7,000 employeesworldwide and 1,000 corporatecustomers to whom they providedata, voice, and IP messagingservices. They market to globalcompanies, such as managing theSabre network. They differentiatethemselves by providing their

service around the world with asingle operation, with end-to-endcontrol of their maintenanceorganization, their networktechnology, their and planningrules.

Today, customer service hasbecome a hot area in ISPs.Instead of getting beeped at nightto handle an emergency, customerservice managers are aiming toprevent fires at their customers’sites. The packaging of services isgoing to become a keydifferentiator.

Facts of life today

Network service quality ismission critical to companiestoday. If a network goes down, itcould kill a business fairlyquickly. People cannot afford tohave major network failures. Inthe past, companies had a centralsite with satellite offices. When asatellite when down, it was theonly site affected. Today, if youlose a VPN, the whole businessapplication goes down. Thus, it ishigher priority to business.Managers therefore need to ask:What is our business risk withthis network?

Capacity management isbecoming a key issue. Like cars,you need a six-year anti-corrosionguarantee with networks. Peoplenow assume that networks shouldwork, whereas network uptimeformerly was a differentiator.When customers turn over theirnetwork to a provider, they stillneed to manage the risk as if theywere running the networkthemselves. Therefore, serviceproviders must provide theircustomers with data on what ishappening on the VPN.

Legacy systems tend to createblack holes where you cannot seewhat is going on. As you adddifferent levels of service, theyneed to be integrated. In order toprovide a complex portfolio ofservices, it is not enough to plugit in and sell it. There must beintegration between the servicelayers.

End-to-end security on VPNsis coming, but to achieve this end-to-end control requiresconstraints.

Today’s customers are notbuying single services. They arebuying packages of services,which they want à la carte. Theywant them put together indifferent ways. So serviceproviders have to customize theirservices around each customer’sproblems. From the customers'point of view flexibility isbecoming a determinant of QoS.

Boundary issues: How doboundaries between serviceproviders affect quality ofservice? Boundaries occur inmany places. There areboundaries between the servicelayers, between geographic splits,among alliance companies, andlinks into the Internet. QoS issuesapply to how you deliver a serviceand report it. It is not just aboutSLA reporting; it is about howthe services are delivered in thefirst place.

Boundaries do create QoSproblems, and the moreboundaries you have, the worse itgets. You can live with them, butyou have to minimize their effecton your business. Try to have acontrol point on each side of theboundary. You will have a



problem at the transport level justplugging together two networksfrom two providers. If they usethe same network switches, youcan reduce some of the problems.

You can force the situationby building an overlay network orby choosing partners with thesame basic network as yourself.But, if one network is managedby two different companies, youstill have problems because theplanning and engineering rules ina configuration table have to beset by someone. The way youplan and set your engineeringrules in a network determinesquality. So planning rules end-to-end need to be addressed.

Boundaries also come in atthe service level, not just thetechnical level. All the people inthe partnering companies—inmarketing, planning, engineering,etc.—need to work together. Youneed supportive management onboth sides of a boundary for thenetworking to succeed. It is achallenge because it is more likelyto have problems. If you areworking in a global company, youknow that just getting sales teamsworking together is difficultenough.

To deliver good service, youhave to reengineer yourprocesses. A lot of this is processdriven. We all know how difficultit is to reengineer your ownprocesses. Trying to reengineerend-to-end with partners is evenmore difficult.

Who owns a bill is an issue.If you are billing for multiplelevels of service among severalproviders, who owns the bill?This is part of QoS. Who will

collect the billing data, who willvalidate it, and who will handlebilling inquiries? These areas cancreate major frustrations forcustomers. Billing is a toppriority, and is becoming a majorcustomer service issue.

Boundaries create ambiguityof ownership, and this ambiguitypotentially causes a qualityproblem, a problem for end-to-end management, and QoSdelivery and reporting problems(due to a break in the informationflow). So avoid them, where youcan.

QoS is a big area ofdifferentiation for serviceproviders. Today, most providershave legacy systems that have ledto piecemeal solutions, such ascustom-built reportingcapabilities. When these workcustomers might perceive aquality service, but the provider’soverhead goes up and up. Whentheir cost base is linked to theirvolume, they have to reengineer,or they will go out of business.

There are very few standardpackages of QoS bundles in themarketplace today. There haveonly been a few announcements interms of standard network pathavailability guarantees orstandard reports. There have beentools to give visibility tocustomers, but they can beexpensive, are only for onecustomer, etc. So we are movingaway from these labor-intensivetypes of reports into automaticdata collection.

Anything that negativelyimpacts people, processes, andtechnology leads to poorerservice. The three have to be

addressed in parallel. And it isbest to use off-the-shelf packagesas far as possible so that changescan be made quickly.

Service Level Agreements(SLAs). All customers wantthem, but to be meaningful, youhave to track performance andthen make businesscommitments—that is, offerlevels of guarantees. In someparts of the world, it is impossibleto give a guarantee that, say, acircuit will be fixed in 24 hours.In such cases, the best you can dois give customers information,such as “Of our 500 circuits inthat area, we average fixes within36 hours, but it depends onwhether the circuit is in the city orin the country.” Gaps appearamong local access carriers, sothere are tiers of service based oncountry, rather than globalguarantees of service.

In countries where the localcarriers are willing to giveguarantees, your service providercan give fixed end-to-endguarantees. Other countriesrequire more flexibility. So whilea service provider mightownership of a problem end-to-end, they cannot guaranteeresolution where they have nocontrol.

Bringing together differentservice layers requires collectingdata from different sources. Also,a QoS guarantee is a snapshot.The sales cycle for buying amajor VPN is from six months totwo years. Customers estimatetheir data needs, but thosegenerally go up much faster thananticipated, and often inunexpected places. QoS



guarantees are based on specificassumptions. If those are wrong,the QoS guarantees becomeinvalid. So you have to managethe process. Watch upgrades andmoves, update your SLA. It isbest to manage SLAs as aprocess, not as a one-off. It is nota precise science. Polling is notaccurate.

The data for an SLA comesfrom many sources. On thenetwork itself, there areaccounting records (to get framerelay reporting, for example).Due to the volume of traffic, itcannot be done dynamically.Real-time spot samples can betaken, so that customers can seetransit times from point to point.You can do averaging. From helpdesk, you have data on troubletickets to determine, for example,how quickly you get out to do siterepairs. On voice, you can do testcalls. On LANs, you can putboxes on premises to track thedata for management consoles.

In today’s world,companies do not put

business critical applicationson the Internet.

The next step above givingcustomers data about their VPNis to give them more value add,“so what” advice, such ascapacity management advice onwhen to upgrade their network.

Mark Fisher, ConcentricNetworks

AT&T’s recent frame relayoutage sensitized people about theissues.

Concentric is an ISP that hasbeen building for the past 18months a high-performance U.S.backbone to service virtualprivate networks of enterprisesfor video conferencing, extranets,and wide area networks. RealQoS standards are not yetavailable.

Concentric is most interestedin VPNs that require tailoring;that is most of them. But theyhave had some experience puttingIP traffic on top of an ATMbackbone network. They havebeen able to manage it in theshort-term through smartengineering, but now they want toimplement first-available types ofQoS protocols. They hostintranets as well and DSLservices.

The essence of their strategyabout VPNs is that there is anear-perfect combination of thebeneficial characteristics ofpublic and private networks. Upuntil the Internet, this wasaccomplished via a secure privatenetwork, although it was notubiquitous and flexible. TheInternet is ubiquitous and flexible,but not secure.

So they created an IP VPNthat marries the characteristics ofthe two; it will sit adjacent to theInternet and allow sites to havepredictable performance andsecurity while networking acrossthe Internet among sites. It will besome time before individualservice providers will let youmanage services from disparatenetworks and get seamless SLAsyou might want. So providers areattempting to guarantee QoS—frame-relay-like performance

levels and security—on theirVPNs while allowing access tothe Internet’s ubiquity.

Concentric’s network is anATM backbone network anchoredby 20 super points-of-presence(super POPs) around the U.S.These super POPs aggregatedifferent kinds of traffic—dialtraffic, dedicated voice/videotraffic, and other accesstechnologies, (such as regionalBell company frame relayservices), and DSL accessservices. This approach allowsthem to aggregate certain kinds oftraffic and makes it possible toachieve predictable performance.

More than half their trafficremains on their private network,the other reaches out to the publicInternet.

They believe that networkperformance is a keydifferentiator, in severalcategories, such as guaranteeingdial success rates, latency acrossthe network, and throughput.

Their old legacy network wasa frame relay network; the latencywas highly variable in peak andoff-peak periods. In fact, it wastoo high to support someapplications. When theyimplemented their ATMbackbone, they drove latencydown and created fixed, orpredictable, latency. Thus theycan now support video—whichcares about latency and jitter ( thevariance in flight time as theytraverse the network). Theyguarantee latency of 125milliseconds (similar to ISDNnetwork) and jitter is less than 10milliseconds.



Their current SLAs nowaddress latency across thenetwork, uptime on the network,business dial connection successrates, and connect speed. For thedial network, they use third-partydata from Inverse NetworkTechnologies—the J.D. Powers ofthe Internet. For dedicatednetwork SLAs, they are alsoworking with INT to do samplingover a given time. INT publishesreport cards on major ISPs.

Concentric also acknowledgeswhere they have missedguarantees and credit thecustomers’ accounts proactivelyto put teeth into their SLAs.

In summary, managing forbusiness-class QoS requires, inthe short run, solid engineeringusing robust technologies (such asATM), actively monitoring thenetwork, managing capacityplanning, and managing to SLAs.In a few years the field canimplement emerging standards,then service providers can besomewhat optimistic aboutnetwork-to-network SLAs, fromdifferent providers. which can bepassed on to end users. Today noframe relay service provider willsupport an SLA from anotherprovider.

Providers are looking to beable to manage QoS on anapplication basis, and per traffictype.

Bandwidth is being addressedby vendors who are building out“phenomenal” amounts ofbackbone capacity in the U.S.Bandwidth is being driven into theground alongside railroad tracksthroughout the U.S. One strand offiber is purported to be able to

carry all the voice traffic in theU.S. today.

Providers are looking toprovide more sophisticatednetwork management, such asletting companies requestbandwidth on-the-fly, for videoconferencing, pay a premium, butknow it can be provisionedquickly.

Alternatives being consideredis IP on Sonet—no need for ATMat all—but it does not help withQoS. Today, ATM is relied onheavily for QoS offerings.

Tomorrow’s Call Center

Blair Pleasant, PelorusGroup

Tomorrow’s call center willbe a customer interaction center,not a call center, with customerscontacting in many ways—through the Web, email, videokiosks, as well as via telephoneand fax.

The center will need toprovide the same level of serviceno matter how customers interact.Companies now have parametersfor interacting with phone-incustomers, such as, they shouldnot wait more than two minutesbefore their call is escalated tosomeone who can help them. Thesame should hold true forcustomers who contact the centerthrough the Web or email. Theyshould not have to wait longer toreceive a response.

Centers also needmanagement reporting proceduresso that email and Webinteractions do not fall throughthe cracks. We know how many

phone calls are abandoned or notanswered. We need tools tomeasure this for electronicinteractions as well.

Many products handle emailand Web contacts. They comefrom third-party vendors, such asGenesis, Adante, and Mustang.

The new centers will usecomputer telephony integration(CTI). Pleasant recentlycompleted a report on CTI andthe call center. She believes that acall center without CTI is like aFerrari with a lawnmower engine.CTI provides many tools foragents—desktop telephony (“softphone”), voice/data transfer,intelligent routing—making theagents so much more responsiveto callers. CTI is crucial

With CTI, you can bring theintelligence dispersed throughoutthe company to the agent’sdesktop. The agent can see whothe caller is, their past issues, theproducts they have, theiroperating environment, and so on.It helps agents provide morepersonalized service, evencustomized add-on and crossselling.

Call centers will become callcenters without walls.

n CAN Comment ØØ CC WOW,for short. Maybe this is a newacronym!

In addition to formal callcenters, companies haveemployees who help informally. Itis important to make them part ofthe call center without walls, andgive them the same tools.

Centers will also employintelligent routing, or skills-based



routing. All customers want tofeel understood and receiveindividualized service. Intelligentrouting helps achieve this. Basedon the customer’s input to voiceresponse prompts or theirautomatic number identification(ANI), their call can be matchedwith their data base entry androuted to the most appropriateagent. It makes customers muchhappier, and speeds up calls.

Remote agents, and work-at-home agents, will be used muchmore widely in the next few yearsin call centers. These are growingquickly because many peopleprefer to work at home. You canget more experienced experts attimes by tapping this market, butthey need the same tools as if theywere in the call center so they canbe just as responsive tocustomers.

We are going to beintegrating all these

technologies into the center,so it is important to workwith vendors who provide

system integration andconsulting services.

These will be key in the comingyears.

Robert Young,AnswerSoft Inc.

Unfortunately, manycompanies only think of callcenters as telephone call centers.But this seems to be changing.Centers are opening up to includeother ways to interact withcustomers. The call center of thefuture has the same three goals astoday: happy customers,

customers who spend moremoney with you, and efficientcenter operations. The center willjust use new ways to interact withcustomers. To reach these goals,companies should accommodate,automate, and integrate.

Accommodate the wayscustomers want to interact. If acall center is closed, customerswant other ways to interact withthe company, such as via theWeb. Providing various optionscan give a competitive edge.Customers expect more; if you donot give them what they expect,they will go elsewhere.

People are more comfortableinteracting in different ways withcompanies—letter, fax, phone,online chat, video conference,email, and so on. You mustprovide multiple options. In thefuture, you will give yourcustomers options on how theycan interact with you.

When Wells Fargo moved toonline communication withcustomers, costs dropped from$1.07 per minute to interact withcustomers in a branch to one centper minute to interact via the Website. In addition, many potentialclients preferred the Web.Furthermore, the Web encouragedcustomers to consolidate theiraccounts (formerly dispersedamong different banks), so theycould easily see everything atonce.

Normally, people bank nearwhere they live. When they move,they change banks. But WellsFargo found that by dealing withcustomers electronically, those

customers did not change bankswhen they moved. This was asurprise benefit.

Automate the interactionprocess. The old way of servingcustomers was by phone, wherethe customer rep looked up theirrecord on the database and gottheir information out of otherfiles. In the future, these files willbe gathered automatically beforethe agent picks up the call. Theagent then only needs to updatethe data and focus on problemresolution and cross selling.

This type of automation canbe applied to handling emails aswell, with a “package” ofinformation about a customer sentto an agent along with the email.

Integrate your systems.Typically, customer informationis spread around in a company. Inthis complex environment,opportunities to really service acustomer may be lost. It isdesirable to have all the relevantdata linked and integrated, so thatit looks like one common set ofdata that is easily accessible.

For example, a screen couldhave key customer informationalong with key customer contacts,which include, dated and insequence, the pages they viewedon your Web site, email to you,phone calls, and orders, perhapsvia fax. The challenge is to notrequire someone to enter all thisdata. Technologies are coming toallow automatic gathering of thisdata. Web trackers wereoriginally intended for companiesto see which parts of their sitewas most often visited. Now,companies want to use this



software to track customermovements.

The same is true with email.Mustang now has a product tohelp companies route email. Thekey challenge is connecting allthese interactions into one screenfor agents.

Marissa Morrow, LucentTechnologies

Numerous issues are drivingthe evolution of the call center.

• Resource acquisition andretention. The numberone issue is how to findpeople, train them, andkeep them. This has ledto “agent satisfaction” inaddition to customersatisfaction. Do they havethe right benefits, such asthe right ergonomics,enough breaktimes, and acool system to use?

• Cost management. Some45-50 percent of callcenter costs are peoplecosts. Another 45-50percent are networkoriented, while theremaining 5-10 percentare investments intechnology. Companiesare now focusing onnetwork control: how toreduce the abandon rate,call time in queue, andkeeping customers on theline just long enough tobalance efficiency andeffectiveness. One of thenew strategies is to issuea busy signal when youare overloaded, ratherthan have customers sit

on the line for a longtime. The presumption isthat they will call back.

• Productivityimprovement. You canuse CTI to deliverinformation to the agentand thereby cut down onthe duration of the call.Faster is better, whetherit is keystrokes or fileaccesses.

• Levels of accessibility.How do customers wantto interact with you?Customers no longeraccept 9-to-5. They wantaround-the-clock accessand in numerous modes.

• Customer expectations.These are driving thechanges. The customer isking. We have taughtpeople to raise theirexpectations. Just a fewyears ago, executives didnot want customers’ callshandled by voice mail.Today, voice mail is usedwhen customer reps arenot available. LANs,ATMs, and voiceresponse units havesimilarly changedexpectations. Today theyare accepted; yesterdaythey were not.

She then outlined sometechnologies for tomorrow’s callcenters:

Computer-telephonyintegration (CTI) . Five yearsago, everyone talked about CTI,but they were afraid to implementit. Today, every call center

requires CTI. And the standardscreen pop is no longer enough. Itis too simple. Agents are focusingmore on selling to each customer,individually, so they need thecustomer’s history and experiencewith the company. Companieswant to predict the caller’srequirement so that they canchoose the agent who can besthelp that customer. That personcould be the troubleshooter wholast helped that customer. Or itmight be to an agent who is goodat handling customers whoabandon calls (as this caller hasdone several times). CTI helpsdirect calls, which is veryimportant.

Virtual call center. The goalis to have any agent, locatedanywhere, able to handle any call.This may not be practical, giventhe skills of the agents; however,if resources are geographicallyspread, skills-based routingmakes better use of thoseresources, and can reduce costs.

The virtual call center can beused in three ways.

• For large call centers(100-500 agents). Rarelyare call centers growingabove 500 agents thesedays. One reason is thatthere are businessrecovery issues about500. Distributedlocations provide afallback position.

• Small remote nodes canbe from 0-100 agents.

• Agents at home.Resource acquisition isthe issue. In certain cities,all competitors are vying



for the same resources.Companies need to lookelsewhere, tapping non-traditional markets, suchas retirees in Florida.They want to work part-time, logging in 3-4 hoursa day, withoutcommuting, withouthaving to buy newclothes, and with a cup ofcoffee in their hand.

Virtual call centers not onlyneed to be transparent to callers,they need to be transparent toagents and management.

Issues with virtual callcenters:

• Network ramifications.One large company had15 locations with arobust network structure,so they could easilyconnect the resources.But there is a cost;compare it with thebenefits.

• Management. Willsupervisors havesubordinates spreadacross several sites? Ifso, their job is differentthan managing an all-in-one-place center.

• Centralizedadministration. How canyou access remotesystems to add agents,move agents, manage thetelephony structure, etc.if you have a centralcontrol center?

• Internet access. Everyonewants to be here, but theyoften do not put in theprocesses to handle, say,

email efficiently andeffectively. It is notacceptable to take 2-3weeks to respond toemail. The applicationsthat seem to be workingare real-time interactions,call back requests, andintegrating voice over theInternet (although veryfew are doing this at themoment).

Internet access needs tobe tested. Do not just letthe river gush through.Pick a segmented marketand focus on it first.

The goal is to integrate email,web response, web chat, andvideo response.

Today, Internet transactionsaccount for some 5 percent of callcenter interactions. This isexpected to increase to 30 percentby 2000. Those centers that allowInternet access today say that itdraws in new customers that theywould not otherwise reach.

Video call center. Today,there is lots of talk, very littleaction about video call centers.This is immature; where CTI was6-7 years ago. The video kiosk isone option. The video call center,where you share voice and videoacross a Web connection, isanother. It is expensive, which isthe main current impediment.

Video kiosks are good forshopping. You can not only seethe item of interest, but by justpushing one button, you can alsosee an agent and talk to them.You have the same personalinteraction (perhaps more) aswhen shopping at a store. And for

the retailer, this is cheaper thanopening a branch office.

The ultimate is turning Web-enabled TV into a video-enabledcall center.

Evaluating new technology.There are six rules of success.

• Do your homework.Know your customer’sexpectations as well asthe reality in the callcenter. Unfortunately,there are numerous ISand telecom managerswho buy a call centersystem without asking thecall center managerwhether it will work.

• Design a conceptual ideaand then test it.

• Refine your idea andthen test it again.

• Do not acquiretechnology for itself.

• Be sure that agents havea role in creating thefunctional design. Theyneed the ownership.

• Experiment. Onesoftware companyradically experiments.For instance, theydecided to give somethingaway when they had tokeep callers in queue fora certain length of time.The gifts only cost 5-6cents to them, such as aCD ROM telephonedirectory. They wouldplay an announcementthat apologized forkeeping the callerwaiting, and offer optionsof several gifts. When the



caller accepted a gift,they were shifted to lowerpriority. So the managercould prioritize calls.But, what works for onecenter does not work forall.

n CAN Comment ØØ The ideahere is that if you keep yourcustomers happy, they willkeep coming back!

Max Fiszer, MultiCall Inc.

Just because something istechnologically possible does notmean it will occur. He oncepredicted that we would be acheckless society by 1985. It didnot happen, although it waspossible, because people did notwant to give up float on theirbank accounts.

He also predicted that IBMwould not get in the PC businessbecause he did not think theycould make money in thatbusiness. They did, and he thusconcluded that you cannotpresume that people will reactrationally.

His third prediction is that theDow will be at 18,000 by 2000.

Call centers started ascomplaint centers. Companiesmade a few of their new hires“vice president” and funneled allcomplaints to them. It was a goodnotion, but since handlingcomplaints was not desirable,companies began paying by thenumber of calls handled—thiswas the only thing that could betracked. This shortened the calls.But if companies could correlatecompany revenues from a

collection department with lengthof calls, they would discover thatshorter calls were not necessarilybetter calls. UCD systems alsodistributed calls to the longest idleagent. This might have beenappropriate when paying fortaking the most calls, but it hadno correlation with skills.

According to statistics, 70percent of all customerinteractions with companies takeplace in the call center. This isimpressive, even if the figure isonly 60 percent.

Tomorrow’s call centers willhave sociological, technological,and economic effects.

Sociological changes. TheWeb is changing our entiresociety. Customers have highservice expectations, not just inthe U.S. but throughout theworld. We expect to be coddled.We want an answer within fiverings. Convenience shopping isgrowing. People shop from home,from work, using any means theycan and from anywhere. Thenotion of teleworking is alsogrowing because people want todo it.

Technological changes. CTIis the most essential technologyhere today. It will be pervasivesoon. The Web also hastechnological impacts. Inaddition, the availability oftechnology is so wide that it willgovern how call centers develop.

Economic changes. The Webis globalizing business. Smallcompanies can sell worldwide,without direct contact withcustomers. Markets can beanywhere and competitors can be

anywhere as well. This is atremendous change. Location isonly is important when sellingbagels these days.

The major purpose is todifferentiate yourself. You cannottreat all your customers alikebecause only 20 percent give you80 percent of your business. Sopersonalize your interactions.

The biggest concern in callcenters is the level of expertise ofthe agents. It is too thin. It ismore important to get to a personwho knows the answer, and this iswhere a call center without wallscould be a boon. Why not makethe entire company a call center,including the president? Even thesecurity guard could take calls atnight, at least for directingdesperate customers to someonewho can help.

Today, most call centers areformal centers, with a supervisorand full-time call centeremployees. The prospect for thefuture is more informal centers,with many people doing call-center work part-time.

Today, the phone is thelargest access tool; and it willcontinue to be so, because thepersonal voice is very important.Most automation today comesfrom voice automation.Gradually, there will beautomation for the Web, butvoice will continue to play asignificant part.

Video may not become asimportant as some think becauseit represents a loss of privacy.People do not want to be “onscreen, on guard” when they areon the phone. We should be



asking whether people really wantto do business this way on aregular basis. Perhaps not.

The Internet will take a largerrole in handling voice in additionto Web interactions. Voice is acomplement but it should bereserved for people who buy largeitems. Email should be goodenough for the lower ticket itempurchasers. Big customersperhaps should have the option ofimmediate chatting online as wellas voice. But it may not be wiseto offer all these options to everycustomer because they do not allhave the same value.

Multifunction call centers arelike the entire company being acall center. A small travel agencyis essentially a call center. Thefunctions are identical. Manypeople fit the call center role.

Metrics are important, andthey need to be kept for the best20 percent of customers and forthe remaining 80 percent ofcustomers. These should not beintermixed, and they should notbe the same. On the subject ofabandoned calls, there are meanstoday to call back thoseabandoned calls by capturingtheir ID and then passing thisinformation onto agents to handlewhen they are not busy.

One hundred percentcallback needs to be a measure

for tomorrow.

The importance of servicelevels is the amount to knowledgethat occurs during the interaction.Happy customers are great, butonly if they help you achieve whatyou want to achieve.

If you have segmented agentsby voice, email, video, andoutbound, you have anunmanageable center. You needto be able to integrate them.Managing, even in an informalcall center, is the most importantaspect.

To mitigate technologicalchallenges, try to buyarchitecturally integrated systems.An open architecture is a giventoday. Plan on growing. Theblended call center—everyone asa call center—is the ultimate.

The Newest Value AddedService Offerings fromCarriers, ISPs, andCLECs

Rod Nelson, AT&TWireless Services

Wireless is pervasive. As hesat outside the convention centeron a bench, many people walkingby were talking on a phone. Hewas also on the phone.

AT&T Wireless has 8 millioncustomers; it was formerlyMcCaw CellularCommunications. Headquartersare in Seattle and it has 6,500locations and serves 75 majorcities across Europe and Asia. Ithas the largest digital coverage inNorth America. Its first digitalnetwork was launched in 1993.

Estimates of subscribers forthe three dominant wirelesstechnologies in North Americaare

• TDMA has 4 millionsubscribers

• CDMA has 1.5 millionsubscribers

• GSM has 1 million

AT&T Wireless is growing at150 percent per month, so nearlyall new customers are digital, andcustomers are converting fromanalog to digital. The wirelessscene in North America is digital.AT&T has 50 percent of itswireless traffic on the digitalplatform.

At McCaw, they used thecellular frequency band of 850MHz in the radio spectrum. In1994, when the FCC auctionedoff PCS licenses, AT&T acquiredfrequencies for cities it did notservice at 850. The vision backthen was that PCS and cellularwould be the same; so AT&Twould offer the same features toboth. PCS was not just notsmaller, cheaper, lighter. Todaythey are the same, and all carriershave the same vision taking thispath.

Their AT&T wireless PCSfeatures, available at 850 and1900 MHz, consist of:

• Caller ID—this hasbecome a standard

• Longer battery life—thisalso is a fundamentalbenefit of digital service

• Message waiting—combined with voice maillets you know how manymessages are waiting

• Short message service—to send a message to adigital phone through anInternet email address orthrough AT&T’s Website



• Authentication—haseliminated the risk offraudulent use of cellphones; phones can nolonger be cloned

• Dual-band, dual-modephone—this technologyallows greater coverageof North America—180million POPs by the endof 1998, and Canada willadd 25 million fromCanTel, Canada’sWireless carrier

Estimates predict strongdigital wireless growth. It willbecome a strong mass marketitem in the next few years.Estimates range from 141 millionto 158 million in three studies for2006—up from 60 million today.

What is the engine forachieving that growth? Clarity,ubiquity, and lower costs. But foreach carrier, growth will bepropelled by value added andnon-voice services.

Traditionally wireless hasbeen in the outdoors—the macro-cell environment—on the road, onthe move. But increasingly,AT&T has added micro-cells, toincrease capacity to the outdoornetwork. Over the past ten yearsthe field has transitioned from amobile technology to a portabletechnology, primarily for peopleoutdoors.

The new markets are:

• Micro-cells in-buildingfor business users.AT&T is moving to in-building service, wheremicro-cells are built intocampuses and industrialsites to provide wireless,

untetheredcommunication, tosupplement or replace aPBX. Customer studiesshow that productivitygains, elimination oftelephone tag, andlistening to messagesmake this an attractiveoption. This is aparticular strength ofTDMA technology, andis one place AT&T seesits growth accelerating.So this is a voice-basedservice.

• Residential marketplace.AT&T is developing apersonal base station thatcan be installed in thehome and enable one’scellular phone to operateas a cordless phone,without usage basedtariffs. This is also avoice-based service.

• Multi-band multi-modephones. Tri-mode meansthat the phones providedigital services at the1900 band, digitalservices in the 850 band,and analog services in the850 band. CDMA willfollow TDMA in thesame trend. Tri-modehandset sales will growfrom 40 percent today to100 percent by 2001.Costs will decline 10-20percent a year.

The technology isavailable for multi-band,multi-mode phones thatdo not have a battery-lifepenalty, a form-factorpenalty, or a usability

penalty. Usability isgreater because it canfollow you from yourhome anywhere in NorthAmerica.

• Non-voice wireless.AT&T recentlyintroduced PocketNetservice, a platform andservice that integratesvoice and data into ahandset. The futureplatforms for wirelessdata communicationsinclude notebookcomputers (tens ofmillions installed base),Windows CE or palmtopdevices (several millioninstalled base), and 60million cellular phones.So one of the mostpopular wireless dataplatforms will be thesephones. They are familiarto people.

PocketNet uses a thinclient model but adapts tothe constraints ofwireless. The phone has amicro-browser, like ascaled-down Netscape. Ittalks to a AT&T networkserver, which acts as agateway to Web sites andAT&T services andapplications—such aspersonal informationmanagement. You canaccess your calendar,contact list, or createappointments for the day.The service synchronizesbetween a handset, thenetwork, and a desktopcomputer.



AT&T also providesaccess to white page sitesto look up phone numbersin the U.S. They havetwo-way email, allowingfaxing of attachments ora message to a nearbyfax, which acts as aprinter. You can forwardmessages andattachments, and so on. Ituses a CDPD (cellulardata packet data) networkin 70 large U.S. cities.

This is where AT&T thinksdevices are going in the future.

The wish list of the futuremight have speech recognition fordialing numbers and the ability tocommunicate with other devicesin an untethered fashion—such ascommunicating to your palmtopdevice, linking it to the network.Another accessory might be adigital camera to take electronicpostcards. Or, if you are lost onthe way to a meeting, you canshow the other person yourlocation over the phone and shecan tell you how to get to her site.Wireless digital telephony makessense, perhaps more sense thanfrom a fixed location. Withwireless, you can position thephone and turn it around, showingpeople where you are in real time.

AT&T sees the convergenceof a wireless phone and anadvanced computing device as thekey to understanding the thirdgeneration of wireless services.The next generation is alphabetsoup: wideband CDMA (W-CDMA), time division multipleaccess (TDMA), and IMT-2000—the set of requirements

that defines the next generation ofwireless services.

For voice, these requirementsinclude quality comparable towireline, security andconfidentiality comparable towireline, and use of a hierarchicalcell concept with private andpublic cells operating in the samespace (such as public cellsoverlaying private cells incampuses or homes). It specifiesdata rates of 144 kbps for fast-moving vehicular applications,384 kbps for pedestrian use, and2 Mbps for indoor applications—all within one system architecture.

Standards were due in 1998;the process is underway toestablish the framework. But itwill be a real race. Japan has veryaggressive plans for introducingservices based on theserequirements in 2000. Europe andthe U.S. plan to introduceservices in 2001 to 2002.

The original goal was a singlerevolutionary standard; however,this is unlikely because the needsof different carriers and marketsdiffer. AT&T sees IMT-2000 asa service vision, not a particularfrequency band or technology.AT&T found that they alreadymeet 85 percent of these servicevision requirements. Voice qualitywill exist, so will security. In fact,wireless will be more secure. Inaddition, the hierarchicalframework exists.

The gap today is in the higherbandwidth data services. This willbe the engine of growth forsubscribership and usage beyond2000. A question not yetanswerable is “What wouldsubscribers be willing to pay to

send an electronic postcard ormake a video call or downloadfull-color maps of theirdestination?” The current trend isthat they will not pay much morethan they would pay today.

For the third generation,companies are looking to newspectrum (UMTS or widebandCDMA) for those markets and toimplementation in existingspectrum (EDGE, a wider-bandTDMA technology capable ofproviding these wider bandwidthservices).

The first generation ofcellular was analog, voice telecomonly. Second generation is digital,with dual-band and dual-modevoice plus the beginnings of data.Third generation is adding veryrobust and economical data.

Networks becomeincreasingly evolve fromhardware to software-intensiveand software-definedapplications. The Internet is themodel. Value added services inthe transmission of content iswhere growth will come. In tenyears, the network will be basedon software with Internet and datacommunications standards, openprogramming languages, and veryintelligent voice and dataterminals. This is a significanttransition from today’s voice-oriented network.

The challenges for vendors ofthis new generation of wirelessinclude balancing the networks,maintaining investments incurrent networks whiletransitioning to the new services,and making sure the transitionshappen at the right pace.



Chuck Poston, Worldcom

The last three to four yearshave been phenomenal and thelast two have had radical changes.Two years ago, T-1 wasconsidered significant bandwidth.Within the last six months,Worldcom is see exponentialgrowth in customer requirementsfor bandwidth. DS-3s arecommonplace now. OC-3 ordersare coming from government andInternet and commercialcustomers. And they are startingto see OC-12.

They also see the evolution oftraditional data applications. Thethings that seem to be driving thisis the Internet and email. In thefuture, bandwidth requirementswill go straight up as Worldcomis not yet seeing video applicationrequests.

The traditional telco modelhad long-haul carriers pick uptransmissions from a localcarrier, take them across the widearea, and hand them over toanother CLEC on the other end,which provides the last mile. Theproblem with this traditionalmodel—which long-haul carriersstill follow—accountability,single point-of-contact, and theability to deliver services quicklyare missing.

Worldcom has a newparadigm, which it believes othertelcos will adopt. The new modelhas one provider that has localpresence, wide area presence, andpotential presence overseas (notthrough consortiums but throughowning facilities). Worldcom hasfiber in over 80 cities and 4,000-

5,000 lit buildings. This allowsdelivery of services close to theend user. In addition, Worldcomhas two significant buildsoverseas.

One is Gemini, which is aSonet ring across the country. Itwill have a southern and northernroute at the end of this yearbetween New York and London.The pan-European build willconnect London, Frankfurt, Paris,and Amsterdam. The secondphase will focus on Germany.

The model is facilities-based,delivering service end-to-end frommajor metropolitan areas. Thecustomers are businesses, whichbelieve they need worldwidepresence, with on-net presence inmajor metropolitan areas and off-net for all others. Others telcowill adopt this model in thefuture, Worldcom believes.

A value-added service offeredby Worldcom since June is theIntelenet suite of services, whichoffers DS-1 to the customer site.The customer can then divide thisup as they choose—for Internet,voice, frame relay, and leavesome room for further expansion.This approach permits costsavings and high flexibility. Thereception of Intelenet has beengreat, accounting for one-half theservices they sell. A follow-onservice will be DS-3, available byfall.

Worldcom can now provideinter-lata and intra-lata servicesusing their metro frame-relayservices. It is designed forcustomers with a large localpresence and some long distancerequirements. It can be deliveredwithout an NNI. It is well

received where companies havesome number of offices that needto communicate withheadquarters in the same lata andsome long distance requirementsas well. It is like standard framerelay, except that sites that do notneed WAN services have reducedprices. One of the largestexpenses of a carrier is theoptronics put on fiber. If yourcircuits do not touch that widearea, you should not have to payfor those costs.

Another managed service isSNA over frame-relay, which isrouter-based. It has been wellreceived. It can be fully managedor not; the type of management isup to the customer. Worldcomalso offers an ATM switch-to-switch managed service, but ithas not been successful becausethose organizations using ATMare at the leading edge. They seeit as a significant investment ontheir part, so they do not want amanaged service, yet.

The Internet products comefrom UUNET, Worldcom’ssubsidiary. They offer virtualprivate networks which are routerbased and have security. Therouters are managed by them;they are secure, and they providefirewall security. So Worldcomhelps companies put VPNstogether. VPNs are phenomenal.In a matter of minutes, theypermit you connect to anotheruser.

Currently, this takes weeks ormonths. The prerequisite,however, is that everyone haveInternet presence. This willhappen. VPNs are the wave of thefuture. The biggest downside



today is their security, but thiswill be solved too.

Worldcom also offers Webhosting and integrated access, viaIntelenet. They see an increase inshared access using the Internetbecause most applications do notrequire full bandwidth. Socustomers are dividing up DS-1bandwidth among multipleapplications.

What we see evolving is thatcarriers expanding their presenceon the Internet, as are the regionalBell operating companies,offering a full suite of services,which are international andfacilities based. Telcos are alsomoving into the managed servicesarena in the Internet and for data.

Mike Rouleau, InterpriseNetwork Services (USWest)

US West is offering newservices that enable customers toaccess the Internet faster, usingnew technologies called DSL.They are in the process of rollingout megabit service, which is theirversion of DSL, across 14 states.DSL is about making a markethappen—the types of applicationsthat will arise when users can getone million bits per second to thedesktop, the kinds of support suchcustomers will require, and thetypes of services telcos need tocreate to tap this resource.

The issues surrounding DSLand broadband services are thepotential applications, integratingthe speeds into offices or homeoffices, how telework might work,and how to use DSL forelectronic commerce. Why would

a customer want faster access?US West looks at severalcustomer groups:

• Commercial smallbusiness Internet access:Gain the same advantageas larger companies—larger bandwidth, easierintegration and access

• Residential Internetcustomer: Capabilities tobuild out a home office,and also access familyservices online after workhours. Children’s schoolreports will containcolorful graphics andexplore the world.

• Intranets: The goal issecure point-to-pointconnections fromcompany to peopleworking at home viaLAN-like access.Employees can also getthe same access fromhome or on the road.

• Private data networks.

Some local exchange carrierswant to use DSL as a T-1replacement. Others want toprovide a range of services. USWest believes that DSL has threesweet spots:

• Residential customerscan now get plain oldtelephone service (POTS)for $15 a month, up to$65 for ISDN.

• Power users or smallbusinesses currently haveother options, beginningwith ISDN up to T-1.

• Large businesses haveoptions up to OS-3.

DSL allows the same kinds ofbandwidth with a reasonable pricepoint. With ADSL capabilities, orrate adaptive DSL, they candeliver up to 7 Mbps, with thecapability to integrate easily intoexisting applications.

US West has rolled outmegabit services, deploying 226wire centers servicing 5.5 millionlines, in the past six months—which was incredibly fast. Theirgoal is to double this breadth.They offer three capabilities.

• Megahome service, for256 kbps ($40/month)

• Megaoffice at 512 kbps($60/month)

• Megabusiness at 768kbps ($80/month).

These bandwidths canincredibly change how peoplemanage their business.

These services run over anATM infrastructure and eachconnection is handed off to a hostsite connection, either the Internetor a corporate LAN. The host siteconnections run at T-1, fractionalDS-3, or DS-3. Soon they willoffer OC-3.

Customers can thus have IPservices end-to-end over VPNs,private data networks, or theInternet. The bandwidth is“always on” and enables all kindsof new applications—pushserver- and video conferencing-based apps.

Network managementbecomes critical because thesesystems are disparate. No onegives end-to-end management.The goal is to make it likePOTS—plain old telephone



service. This is a challenge, butthey are needed in this direction.

They have learned thattwisted pair does not mean aDSL-capable local loop exists.There are many things in a 100-year-old network that must beconsidered when rolling out DSL.Engineering characteristics arecritical, and they change fromlocale to locale—such as from thedesert of Tucson, Arizona to thesnows of Brainard, Minnesota.

US West’s engineers are alsoconcerned about what happens tothe spectro-compatibility ofdifferent equipment in theirnetwork. The engineeringassumptions are key.

US West realizes that youcannot have point-to-pointconnections forever, andcorporations do not want to beISPs for their teleworkers. So USWest is focusing on PPP overATM, integrating more devices sothat companies can have a USBinterface, an Ethernet interface, ora PCMCIA card in a laptop.They aim to integrate their legacynetworks so they can offload datatraffic off their voice network toget customers the bandwidth asthey need it.

IP telephony and fax are hugemarkets. They will have greatimpact on US West’s network;DSL is one way to address thisneed. It is an enabler. ATM iscritical, but customers do notwant to deal with cells. Theywant to deal with interfaces theyknow and love—two wiresplugged into a modem.

DSL is price competitive andallows customers to integrate the

data. PPP will play a huge role,so that customers can have on-demand access and bandwidth toany destination. USB willcontinue to grow as an interface.

PC manufacturers willintegrate DSL into theircomputers quickly. Dell will soonoffer a megabit-ready PC. Justplug it in and you're ready to go.Manufacturers will be able tobuild cards and deliver servicesthrough a digital loop carrier.These providers will rallyquickly. Outside majormetropolitan areas, inversemultiplexing over ATM will behuge. Thus, to offer a robustATM network, US West will nothave to supply fiber everywhereto support rural deployments.

ATM networks will finallyplay a key role in mass marketapplications. In addition,companies will continue to bebought and sold in this arena.



Conference Comparison

Visionarios '98

reviewed by Laurence I. Press

I had the opportunity to attend the Visionarios Conference, April 22-24 in Caracas, Venezuela. The conference wassponsored by Reacciun (the network of research centers and national universities of Venezuela). Reacciun was thefirst network in Venezuela, and networking pioneer Luis Germán Rodríguez was Executive Director of the conference.

It is interesting to see the differences between Visionarios and Interop. Of course Interop is much older and larger,but there are differences in emphasis as well. Interop focuses on technology and business (the trend at Interop has beenfrom the former toward the latter over the years). The commercial exhibits are important and extremely informative,and the speakers are increasingly from corporations. Technology and business were certainly present at Visionarios,but so was an awareness of the potential role of the Internet in development—in healthcare, education, raising thequality of life (particularly in rural areas), and of increased economic productivity.

There is the hope that the Internet may help level the playing field between developed and developing nations,between the northern and southern hemispheres, in the same manner as John Sedgmore of UUNET predicted that itwould level the playing field between large and small businesses in his Interop keynote.

The program was divided into three tracks: Education and Society, Economy and Productivity, and theTechnological Platform. The theme of development was reflected in many of the talks. For example, one of the invitedpresentations was by Jesus Martinez, Director of the organization that controls the Internet in Cuba. Martinezdescribed Cuban networking, but stressed that "the major component of the Internet is political." The Internet in Cuba,like anywhere else, reflects a balance between commercial and non-commercial emphasis, but, as Cuba's society isunique, so is its Internet. See http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/ for more on Cuban networking.

Another invited speaker was Nick Kauser, Chief Technical Officer, AT&T Wireless Services. Kauser gave a mostinteresting overview of AT&Ts short and long term view of the wireless IP market. He predicted rapid deployment ofasymmetric wireless services beginning in the next year or two, and moving to higher speeds and different classes ofcustomer (large business, medium business, multi-dwelling units, small business, SOHO and telecommuters, and massresidential) through time. Wireless connectivity is important in developing nations where wired infrastructure is pooror does not reach rural areas.

I was surprised by the high level of interest in Venezuela in open-source software. This emphasis is explained bythe importance of open-source software on the Internet with programs like the Linux operating system, Apache Webserver, and Perl interpreters for Web scripting. Eric Raymond, who was instrumental in convincing Netscape to openthe source code for their Navigator browser, was an invited speaker. He is a proponent of open-source software, citingefficiency in debugging and adding features. His (strong) viewpoint is expressed in a paper entitled the "Cathedral andthe Bazaar" located at http://sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar.txt .

I also gave an invited talk on the tracking of the global diffusion of the Internet. There are many organizationstracking Internet diffusion. Some of these track one aspect of the Net (like the number of hosts registered in eachdomain) and others go into greater depth in a more limited geographic or topical area. This presentation surveyed


these organizations and projects, and presented my own work which seeks to be global in geographic scope, but trackssix dimensions of Internet diffusion. For more on this topic, see http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/gdiff/.

The Internet is an important topic throughout the world, in all nations. Conferences like Visionarios areincreasingly common in developed and developing nations, and they provide an interesting perspective for a visitingAmerican.

And for more to in-depth coverage of Networld/Interop 98, be sure to have a look at CAN #426………



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