Aiming to provide increasingly higher-quality IP and
Internet services at lower prices, Sprint Corp. has begun its most
comprehensive study to date of traffic behavior on its Internet backbone.
After a year of developing its own test equipment, the
carrier late last month began collecting data at its San Jose, Calif.,
Internet POP (point of presence), the first of many sites slated for testing.
Sprint plans to use the data from the testing, called the
Internet Measurement Study, to ensure that its network can handle
ever-increasing customer traffic volume and to discover which network
monitoring tools will be needed in future network equipment.
"Very little is known about the detailed behavior of
Internet backbones," said Bryan Lyles, chief scientist at Sprint, in Kansas
City, Mo. "Very fine-grained studies are what we need to make rational
decisions on the equipment that goes into the network -- even the standards
that go into it."
Sprint hopes the multimillion-dollar, multiyear study will
enable it to keep its equipment costs as low as possible and ensure that its
network delivers optimal performance.
"The goal is to make sure we make the best use of capital
and the other resources we put into the network and to keep our customers
happy," Lyles said.
Performance, performance, performance
As the Internet's importance to a company's bottom line
increases, users expect ISPs (Internet service providers) or other data
carriers to meet increasingly stringent service performance goals.
At Quebecor Printing (USA) Inc., which is installing an
IP-based VPN (virtual private network) at its many locations, "class of
service will include bandwidth allocation and prioritization for certain
applications," said Terry Bush, vice president of data communications, in
Greenwich, Conn.
At its bigger printing facilities, the company is installing
multiple 1.5M-bps circuits to handle growth in its data traffic because IP
bandwidth is more efficient and flexible in a VPN than in more conventional
network designs, Bush said. Nevertheless, Quebecor demands service levels that
rival private network solutions and has a service-level agreement that
specifies zero packet loss and a round-trip, coast-to-coast network delay of
less than 75 milliseconds, Bush said.
Sprint isn't alone among carriers and ISPs in its quest to
improve Internet service. For example, "2001 will probably be the last year
that we will buy narrowband switches," said Fred Briggs, chief technical
officer at WorldCom Inc., in Clinton, Miss.
