4 ms·

The ATM part was amusing. It's still used in the telco space; xDSL runs over ATM, generally speaking. It's not obvious that TCP/IP would win. I wonder how muc

by mannyv 3y ago

The ATM part was amusing. It's still used in the telco space; xDSL runs over ATM, generally speaking. It's not obvious that TCP/IP would win. I wonder how much of its victory was because it was basically free; the specs were public, and pretty much everyone build an implementation. Compare that to the other protocols, which tended to be stuck to a vendor (DECnet, AppleTalk, IPX, token ring). That makes interoperability difficult, since in general companies didn't want to license their tech to someone else because it was a competitive advantage. You can still find the free TCP/IP implementations out there (like tinytcp, which is still floating around).

bsder 3y ago
> I wonder how much of its victory was because it was basically free Ethernet hubs were much cheaper than anything else. This was the big win. At that point, the only question was TCP/IP or IPX/SPX (Novell). You could use Ethernet to hook a couple computers in a room together directly and it worked (mostly). Every other technology required some expensive thing to sit in the middle and direct it all. Then, when you needed to connect a couple rooms together, you could throw a cable over a wall and hook them together. Finally, when you got tired of debugging the inevitable continuous failures due to the "idiots in that one room", you threw an Ethernet hub into the mix to hook the rooms together. This was a bit more expensive, but still not as expensive as the idiotic middlebox for the other technologies. And the improvement in reliability and debugging was palpable enough that your boss didn't give you too much static. This was THE big win that other technologies couldn't deal with. Finally, when you had enough computers that even hubs just weren't cutting it, you bought an Ethernet switch. Yeah, that Ethernet switch was about as expensive as the middlebox from all the other technolgies. However, by now, Moore's Law had been running for a few years so an Ethernet switch was simply expensive rather than outrageous. And you had all this installed Ethernet kit, so your sure as hell weren't going to rip it all out. At this point, the installed base made sure that Ethernet was going to win.
bewo001 3y ago
I once worked in a project where the plan was to have 3 switches in a box, ethernet, ATM, and TDM. The 622 Mbps ATM switch chip was much more expensive than a 1 Gig-Ethernet chip. So ATM was dropped pretty quickly from the concept. ATM-based DSL was a compromise of the different factions inside telcos. The 'net heads' got a fast Internet access technology. The 'Bell heads' got ATM into every home in preparation of all the glorious ATM applications that would be available any moment now.
Aloha 3y ago
The stuff that was wild to me was the ATM LAN products, it was out there for a couple years, but then vanished almost as quickly as it arrived.
giantrobot 3y ago
It wasn't obvious TCP/IP would win for a surprisingly long time[0]. IIUC it was MPLS that addressed the latency issues at the backbone layer for TCP/IP. That, at least IIUC, obviated the major latency advantage ATM had over pure IP backbones. [0] https://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip/articles/tdc0598cover1_side1.html https://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip/articles/tdc0598cover1_side1...
- networkchad 3y ago
  MPLS didn’t really address latency issues in the core - it scaled PE to PE connectivity by removing full table lookups at the P layer and replacing it with truncated labels. However the main long-staying effect of MPLS is enabling L2 and L3 VPNs (VRFs).

by mannyv 3y ago

bsder 3y ago

> I wonder how much of its victory was because it was basically free Ethernet hubs were much cheaper than anything else. This was the big win. At that point, the only question was TCP/IP or IPX/SPX (Novell). You could use Ethernet to hook a couple computers in a room together directly and it worked (mostly). Every other technology required some expensive thing to sit in the middle and direct it all. Then, when you needed to connect a couple rooms together, you could throw a cable over a wall and hook them together. Finally, when you got tired of debugging the inevitable continuous failures due to the "idiots in that one room", you threw an Ethernet hub into the mix to hook the rooms together. This was a bit more expensive, but still not as expensive as the idiotic middlebox for the other technologies. And the improvement in reliability and debugging was palpable enough that your boss didn't give you too much static. This was THE big win that other technologies couldn't deal with. Finally, when you had enough computers that even hubs just weren't cutting it, you bought an Ethernet switch. Yeah, that Ethernet switch was about as expensive as the middlebox from all the other technolgies. However, by now, Moore's Law had been running for a few years so an Ethernet switch was simply expensive rather than outrageous. And you had all this installed Ethernet kit, so your sure as hell weren't going to rip it all out. At this point, the installed base made sure that Ethernet was going to win.

bewo001 3y ago

I once worked in a project where the plan was to have 3 switches in a box, ethernet, ATM, and TDM. The 622 Mbps ATM switch chip was much more expensive than a 1 Gig-Ethernet chip. So ATM was dropped pretty quickly from the concept. ATM-based DSL was a compromise of the different factions inside telcos. The 'net heads' got a fast Internet access technology. The 'Bell heads' got ATM into every home in preparation of all the glorious ATM applications that would be available any moment now.

Aloha 3y ago

The stuff that was wild to me was the ATM LAN products, it was out there for a couple years, but then vanished almost as quickly as it arrived.

giantrobot 3y ago

It wasn't obvious TCP/IP would win for a surprisingly long time[0]. IIUC it was MPLS that addressed the latency issues at the backbone layer for TCP/IP. That, at least IIUC, obviated the major latency advantage ATM had over pure IP backbones. [0] https://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip/articles/tdc0598cover1_side1.html https://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip/articles/tdc0598cover1_side1...

networkchad 3y ago
MPLS didn’t really address latency issues in the core - it scaled PE to PE connectivity by removing full table lookups at the P layer and replacing it with truncated labels. However the main long-staying effect of MPLS is enabling L2 and L3 VPNs (VRFs).