Let integration begin, Alcatel/Cisco deal bears first fruit

Alcatel Data Networks is expected to announce this week plans to integrate Internet protocol switching onto its asynchronous transfer mode switch products. Dubbed IP@ATM, it is the first equipment to emerge from the Alcatel/Cisco Systems alliance formed in June.

IP@ATM puts Cisco's tag switching technology on Alcatel's carrier-class 1100 HSS, which already supports frame relay and ATM. Tag switching is Cisco's answer to scaling IP traffic over wide area networks.

Other solutions include Ipsilon's IP switching, with about 30 partners signed on, and Toshiba's Cell Switched routing. The Internet Engineering Task Force is working on a standard called MPLS.

Alcatel will evolve tag switching into whatever the standard becomes, although Ed Kennedy, Alcatel Data Networks' vice president of marketing, believes the standard will end up most closely resembling tag switching.

Cisco has 80% to 85% of the installed Internet router base, and Alcatel can't go wrong with that kind of market share, Kennedy said.

Tom Nolle, an analyst with CIMI Corp., Voorhees, N.J., is pleased to see more practical answers for wide area IP traffic. Last year's IP switching craze was a bad start, with the IP switch replacing ATM quality of service, switching and routing, he said. The only way a carrier could buy into it would be to deploy ATM for no reason other than to run IP, Nolle said.

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OFF-LINE ...but what a way to go The main reason given for Walter's ouster was a real slap in the face, however. The directors were becoming concerned that he couldn't provide "the intellectual leadership" for AT&T.

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