The enterprise backbone network: making sense of current and emerging technologies

Although many network battles are won by information systems (IS) engineers/managers and their favorite networking vendor, the war rages on. As outlined by Dr. Peter Newman (see IEEE 21st Conference on Local Computer Networks, 1996) the world can be divided into two major networking group. The network socialists and the network capitalists. According to Dr. Newman, the network socialists want shared bandwidth, connectionless network services, and work toward the proliferation of the Internet. In contrast, the network capitalists strives for fixed bandwidth, connection oriented network services, and wishes to put ATM in every coffee pot and toaster on the planet. Whether you are a network socialist or a network capitalist, the need to evaluate and understand the impact and ramifications of choosing and deploying a corporate backbone is an absolute requirement if the goal is to successfully support the enterprise computing and information needs. This paper outlines the more popular network technologies, both currently available and technologies that will be emerging in the not to distant future. These technologies include: FDDI, Switched 10BASE-T Ethernet, Switched 100BASE-T Ethernet, IsoEthernet, Fibre Channel, ATM, and Gigabit Ethernet.