bandwidth question

[Tony Hammitt]

Evan Hoff wrote:
> 
> Tony Hammitt <thammitt at kc.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> >In practice, this is being done for most of the network traffic.
> >As you may know, asynchronus transfer mode (ATM) uses 53 byte
> >'cells' with (I think) an 11 byte header, so they always transmit
> >64 bytes.  Thing is, they can transmit an almost arbitrarily
> >large number of cells, the only limits being the medium and switch
> >used.
> 
> hmm...does this give an overall better Quality of Service?
> 

Yes, that's why they designed it that way.  AT&T etc. didn't want
to have more than one type of cell being transmitted even if it
was for voice, video or some other type of data.  You can pretty
much guarantee the quality of service with ATM.  Ethernet is harder
to convince.

> BTW: i read recently that Bell Labs has done somewhere over 1,000
> different wavelengths of light over fiber...very cool

Ya, now we just need it run directly to our homes =-]

But seriously, how much bandwidth could you actually use?  PCI is
limited to 264 MB/s (single 64-bit card) per bus.  That's a normal
OC-48 ATM connection.  Anything more would be more than you could
handle with a normal computer.  Not to mention that the bottleneck
is almost always the box on the other end you're trying to get data
from...

Oh well, I still want it run to my house..

Cheers,

Tony

> ---------------
> Evan Hoff
> evanh23 at usa.net
> 
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