RE: stds-802-16: 802.16, not 802, will deal with "ATM vs. IP"

["Jarrett, David (David)" <djarrett@lucent.com>]

[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as non-confidential.]

I've been watching this thread of conversation with some amusement.
Although everyone claims to not want a religious war, it has clearly already
started ;-).  

The key thing no on has mentioned is that we should first determine our
critical, key applications.  ATM vs. IP is just a theoretical discussion of
technology that can never be intelligently brought to any conclusion unless
we consider what application to which we want to apply either of them.  

My company's customer base for broadband wireless clearly intends to offer
legacy circuit, packet, frame, and cell services to business customers.
This is a wide range of applications, but all with scalable quality (with a
need to be able to support the highest possible quality).  My perception of
the 802.14 work is that they are really focused on one application -
residential internet access - with limited quality of service.  [Please
correct me if I am wrong.]  Therefore, IP only is obviously very appropriate
for them.  Of course they will be able to do other applications on top of
that (e.g., packet voice, remote corporate network access, ...), but they
will always be limited by their mode of carrying IP, for better or worse.  

I think the first work item for the air interface work (non-withstanding any
future work on coexsitence) should be to define the applications that our
spec should support, and aspects of how they should be supported (quality,
relative importance, cost, ...).  All of us in 802.16 must first think about
the applications that we need to support, and how we think they can best be
supported from an architectural view.  Then we must make contributions based
on that to drive us towards consensus, so that we can then better focus on
how the applications should be supported.  

David W. Jarrett

-----Original Message-----
From: Chet Shirali [mailto:cshirali@speed-demon.com]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 1999 4:43 PM
To: stds-802-16@ieee.org
Cc: sberger@speed-demon.com
Subject: Re: stds-802-16: 802.16, not 802, will deal with "ATM vs. IP"


[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as
non-confidential.]

Hi, 

I want to add some clarifications for the benefit of all the vendor
community on this reflector.

802.14 is currently NOT pursuing ATM MAC seriously. All their efforts
including at the last plenary meeting in Austin, are to develop a standard
for a high performance physical layer (termed as DOCSIS 1.2). 802.14 has
come to a conclusion that the MAC layer best suited for the effort and most
suited for the industry is the DOCSIS 1.1 RFI specifications currently under
development.

Vice chair of IEEE 802 LMSC and chairman 802.14, have sent a joint letter to
CableLabs and to Dave Fellows of SCTE, with a request CableLabs and its
vendor authors to submit the DOCSIS 1.1 RFI specification to a newly
constituted 802.14 task force solely dedicated towards driving working group
consensus around DOCSIS 1.1 specifications and incorporating the work out of
802.14a HI_PHY (called Advanced PHY by SCTE).

Chet   

At 03:26 PM 4/19/99 -0600, you wrote:
>[Notice: It is the policy of 802.16 to treat messages posted here as
non-confidential.]
>
>[I've revised the subject line to reflect the subject. The thread I'm
>replying to is
><http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/16/arc/802-16list/msg00032.html>.]
>
>Steve Farrell wrote:
>
>>Hi gang,
>>
>>I would like to continue this line of dialog because I think that this is
>>important...regarding Marianna's responses...
>
>I agree completely. It's time we get this issue out and on the table. Now
>that we have a contribution submission process, everyone will have a chance
>to make suggestions and offer supporting documentation.
>
>
>>1. ATM vs. IP:
>>Let me step back and ask a dumb question, if IEEE 802 would not accept an
ATM
>>based addressing mode and this group defines an IP only based addressing
mode,
>>than the standard will most likely be completely incompatible with the
lion's
>>share of the LMDS equipment deployments over the next 3 years.  Does that
make
>>sense for us? Does this group run the risk of creating a standard that
noone
>>adopts?
>>
>>Is everyone in agreement that ATM vs. IP over the air may fall outside the
>>scope
>>of this group?
>
>
>802.16 will deal with the ATM vs. IP issue on its merits. 802 rules will
>not make our decision for us.
>
>Take a look at 802.14: it's developing a spec based on ATM frames, in spite
>of the fact that the DOCSIS spec is IP packet based. Regardless of whether
>or not that's a good idea or not, they are going ahead with it, and 802 is
>not constraining them.
>
>I've gotten confirmation from 802 SEC Chair Jim Carlo that this is 802.16's
>decision to make. Let's follow Marianna and Steve's lead: let's start
>deciding!
>
>Roger
>
>
>Dr. Roger B. Marks  <mailto:marks@nist.gov>
>Chair, IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access
>National Wireless Electronic Systems Testbed (N-WEST)
<http://nwest.nist.gov>
>National Institute of Standards and Technology/Boulder, CO
>phone: 1-303-497-3037  fax: 1-303-497-7828
>
>
>
>
Chet Shirali (E-mail: cshirali@speed-demon.com)
Product Manager
Phasecom, Inc.
20400 Stevens Creek Blvd, 8th floor, Cupertino, Ca 95014
Phone: (408) 777-7793
Fax: (408) 777-7787  
URL: http://www.speed-demon.com