5 ms·

One of the earliest attempts to replace the the TCP/IP model (or rather the lower layers of the ISO-OSI model) was the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). Despite

by nnain 12y ago

One of the earliest attempts to replace the the TCP/IP model (or rather the lower layers of the ISO-OSI model) was the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). Despite being a well-intentioned idea, it failed to see real world usage because of the complexity. Along the way many developments happened. People learned to live and work with IPv4. Even IPv6 hasn't picked up despite solving some important problems. So when it comes to updating the core networking infrastructure, I don't think TCP/IP is replaceable. It just works very well now -- you can have real time chats, high throughput data lines, has time-tested code libraries, there's vast amounts of knowledge so you can build apps fast and all that. As I understand, what this 'Named Data Networking' technology is proposing is to replace IP addressing scheme with Names. I'm not sure if the whole internet backbone infrastructure would change it's networking strategy now. TCP/IP addressing format is very structured and that's its strength. IMHO that's actually how communication should take place; not with names that can have high-variation in format.

PinguTS 12y ago
That is not right, that ATM failed to see real world usage. ATM was the backbone of the German infrastructure run mainly by German Telekom for years. It provided a very good service especially for telephony (ISDN). Germany basically had the best telephony network in the world. But the problem is, that IP does not fit with the 55ms time slot in ATM. That is the why all the backbones are replaced with the so-called Next Generation Networks (NGN), which basically is pure IP traffic and everything will be on top of IP, not anymore in parallel to IP. That basically means, moving to VoIP in the backbone and consequently also for the consumer end.
- nnain 12y ago
  Not just German Telekom, several other operators around the globe deployed ATM in the 90s for ISDN services. However, just after a few years, most companies started dropping ATM in favour of IP based networks. By "it failed to see real world usage", I meant, it failed to sustain itself in real world.
- dfox 12y ago
  ATM failed to see the usage predicted by it's proponents in the 90's. The reason for that is that most of such statements about ATM as the new unified network for everything were mostly marketing bullshit disconnected from technical reality. ATM is essentially circuit-switched technology lying somewhere between L1 and L2 that allows for efficient QoS for different services sharing same wire at the expense of ludicrous framing overhead and creating networks of such channels with reasonably simple and fast switches. The QoS part is mostly irrelevant today as faster interfaces made the problem significantly easier to solve so is the simple and fast switching. ATM's orientation towards end-to-end circuit-switched channels is what allows fast switches but also requires some external control-plane that builds and tears down the virtual channels, which I think is the major reason why ATM (and OSI in general) didn't catch on, on IP, you just send packet with destination address down the wire, with ATM you have to establish connection first (by using something essentially out-of-band and centralized). In the end, ATM is widely used today, but mostly as pre-existing way of handling QoS and framing on top of some unrelated but relatively slow L1 technology (ATM is the first higher-level layer of both UMTS and xDSL)
ay 12y ago
"Even IPv6 hasn't picked up" - this needs correction. http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/ http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/ https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-... http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ You can notice that 9% of the internet users in the US are IPv6-enabled. Germany is over 11%. Belgium is almost 30% (of course due to smaller population it's less in absolute host count). How many IPv6 users this is in millions, is an exercise left for the reader. The things are moving very very fast - lots of large SPs have bumped the values within this year from low-mid single digits to nontrivial double-digits, and lots more are in the pipe. All major CDNs support it, helping IPv6-enable thousands of sites that don't run IPv4 on the server itself. I'm saddened by the fact that HN site, being Cloudflare customer, did not flip the switch - there's really zero excuses today. (http://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-the-last-reasons-to-not-enable-ipv6 http://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-the-last-reasons-to-n...) (On a side note, there are today millions of users not worrying to have any IPv4 at all - on T-Mobile's network. See: https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-apricot-2014_1393236641.pdf https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-apricot-2014_13...) Here's another data point, from my home gateway (I'm in the remaining 70% of folks in Belgium who yet don't have IPv6 so I am using Hurricane Electric tunnel - and the Vlan50 is the IPv4-only internet connection, so that counter shows IPv4 user traffic + IPv4 tunnel traffic - so you can count it as "aggregate"). ay-home#sh int Tunnel0 | inc packets|escr Description: Hurricane Electric -- Paris 5 minute input rate 5000 bits/sec, 6 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 5000 bits/sec, 3 packets/sec 171400464 packets input, 193001468663 bytes, 0 no buffer 90187695 packets output, 13837665814 bytes, 0 underruns ay-home#sh int Vlan50 | inc packets|escr Description: Outside - internet-facing 5 minute input rate 143000 bits/sec, 24 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 34000 bits/sec, 25 packets/sec 618491041 packets input, 607147678054 bytes, 38 no buffer 390716032 packets output, 83476555174 bytes, 0 underruns ay-home# Do your math.
- tgflynn 12y ago
  Yes but <20% adoption 18 years after the protocol was designed seems a bit slow, especially given the pace of overall technological change in this century.
lisper 12y ago
My first startup was an attempt to make an ATM-like network that actually worked: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3293 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3293 Although mostly of historical interest now, I think the basic ideas are still sound. But the problem (as we learned the hard way) is that deploying a new network architecture is mainly a political problem, not a technical one.
walshemj 12y ago
yep if having a better networking stack was going to work we would be using OSI, X.400 and X.500 now and not TCP/IP Still id have probably still be working for a Telco and have a really cool mail address though cn=uk cn="maurice"

by nnain 12y ago

PinguTS 12y ago

That is not right, that ATM failed to see real world usage. ATM was the backbone of the German infrastructure run mainly by German Telekom for years. It provided a very good service especially for telephony (ISDN). Germany basically had the best telephony network in the world. But the problem is, that IP does not fit with the 55ms time slot in ATM. That is the why all the backbones are replaced with the so-called Next Generation Networks (NGN), which basically is pure IP traffic and everything will be on top of IP, not anymore in parallel to IP. That basically means, moving to VoIP in the backbone and consequently also for the consumer end.

nnain 12y ago
Not just German Telekom, several other operators around the globe deployed ATM in the 90s for ISDN services. However, just after a few years, most companies started dropping ATM in favour of IP based networks. By "it failed to see real world usage", I meant, it failed to sustain itself in real world.
dfox 12y ago
ATM failed to see the usage predicted by it's proponents in the 90's. The reason for that is that most of such statements about ATM as the new unified network for everything were mostly marketing bullshit disconnected from technical reality. ATM is essentially circuit-switched technology lying somewhere between L1 and L2 that allows for efficient QoS for different services sharing same wire at the expense of ludicrous framing overhead and creating networks of such channels with reasonably simple and fast switches. The QoS part is mostly irrelevant today as faster interfaces made the problem significantly easier to solve so is the simple and fast switching. ATM's orientation towards end-to-end circuit-switched channels is what allows fast switches but also requires some external control-plane that builds and tears down the virtual channels, which I think is the major reason why ATM (and OSI in general) didn't catch on, on IP, you just send packet with destination address down the wire, with ATM you have to establish connection first (by using something essentially out-of-band and centralized). In the end, ATM is widely used today, but mostly as pre-existing way of handling QoS and framing on top of some unrelated but relatively slow L1 technology (ATM is the first higher-level layer of both UMTS and xDSL)

ay 12y ago

"Even IPv6 hasn't picked up" - this needs correction. http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/ http://6lab.cisco.com/stats/ https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-... http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ You can notice that 9% of the internet users in the US are IPv6-enabled. Germany is over 11%. Belgium is almost 30% (of course due to smaller population it's less in absolute host count). How many IPv6 users this is in millions, is an exercise left for the reader. The things are moving very very fast - lots of large SPs have bumped the values within this year from low-mid single digits to nontrivial double-digits, and lots more are in the pipe. All major CDNs support it, helping IPv6-enable thousands of sites that don't run IPv4 on the server itself. I'm saddened by the fact that HN site, being Cloudflare customer, did not flip the switch - there's really zero excuses today. (http://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-the-last-reasons-to-not-enable-ipv6 http://blog.cloudflare.com/eliminating-the-last-reasons-to-n...) (On a side note, there are today millions of users not worrying to have any IPv4 at all - on T-Mobile's network. See: https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-apricot-2014_1393236641.pdf https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/464xlat-apricot-2014_13...) Here's another data point, from my home gateway (I'm in the remaining 70% of folks in Belgium who yet don't have IPv6 so I am using Hurricane Electric tunnel - and the Vlan50 is the IPv4-only internet connection, so that counter shows IPv4 user traffic + IPv4 tunnel traffic - so you can count it as "aggregate"). ay-home#sh int Tunnel0 | inc packets|escr Description: Hurricane Electric -- Paris 5 minute input rate 5000 bits/sec, 6 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 5000 bits/sec, 3 packets/sec 171400464 packets input, 193001468663 bytes, 0 no buffer 90187695 packets output, 13837665814 bytes, 0 underruns ay-home#sh int Vlan50 | inc packets|escr Description: Outside - internet-facing 5 minute input rate 143000 bits/sec, 24 packets/sec 5 minute output rate 34000 bits/sec, 25 packets/sec 618491041 packets input, 607147678054 bytes, 38 no buffer 390716032 packets output, 83476555174 bytes, 0 underruns ay-home# Do your math.

tgflynn 12y ago
Yes but <20% adoption 18 years after the protocol was designed seems a bit slow, especially given the pace of overall technological change in this century.

lisper 12y ago

My first startup was an attempt to make an ATM-like network that actually worked: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3293 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3293 Although mostly of historical interest now, I think the basic ideas are still sound. But the problem (as we learned the hard way) is that deploying a new network architecture is mainly a political problem, not a technical one.

walshemj 12y ago

yep if having a better networking stack was going to work we would be using OSI, X.400 and X.500 now and not TCP/IP Still id have probably still be working for a Telco and have a really cool mail address though cn=uk cn="maurice"