From the ATM Forum Board of Directors Report - Rome, Italy, April 23,1999:
... Fred [Baker, chair of the IETF] stated that 75% of all Internet traffic today touches an ATM device and acknowledged the importance of the role
^^^^^^^ - KEY WORD. Touched - yes (this message touch ATM here twice). More interesting are the slow tendencies. The ATM as the background has the problem - the lack of QoS in this 2 level schema if don't use very complex methods (compare RED+ PRECEDENCE for the DIRECT LINK - and MLPS or ATM Bundle /cisco/). The common idea - if you have an hierarchy of the different network stacks (ATM + IP this case), and there is not good way to translate QoS markers from one level to another (in case of ATM, the only way to do it is to distribute different QoS streams by the different ATM circuits, which cause a lot of headache, and restrict the main principle KISS - don't do QoS calculations where there is not congestion). On the other hand, 2 level network structure realize another GOOD network rule - make every decision ONCE /read packet, analyze it, find outgoing device, mark it and send it there to this device - no transit points should analyze the same packets again; and it makes this 2 level schemas not so worst. The administrative issues (different administration for the background network and IP network) are the benefits (sometimes) too. Really, if someone know some deep analyze of this tendencies, please, send the reference here. Alex.
of ATM in providing traffic engineering in today's networks. ...
I don't really know where this number comes from nor whether it is really true.
A number of facilities-based carriers are either migrating or talking about migrating from ATM to some sort of IP-over-fiber solution. I believe that the economics of ATM versus IP-over-fiber solutions are tremendously different for those who own fiber compared to those who don't own the fiber.
Do network operators really care about the cell-tax? [...]
Define "care". Certainly, one sees a lot of whining about the ATM "cell tax". On the other hand, if Fred Baker is correct, ATM is heavily used in the Internet. Having said that, I believe that any ISP that selects a service on the basis of some sort of overhead measurement, rather than an evaluation of cost versus performance, is confused.
-tjs
Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow (+7 095) 194-19-95 (Network Operations Center Hot Line),(+7 095) 230-41-41, N 13729 (pager) (+7 095) 196-72-12 (Support), (+7 095) 194-33-28 (Fax)