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For almost a decade, we've been hearing that the biggest problem facing our networks (other than cost, of course) is quality of service (QoS). Most recently, QoS has been the mantra of the ATM set - the thing that every user needs, isn't getting and will pay for ATM networking in order to obtain.
Well, now those danged IP proponents have come along and offered us QoS without any fancy ATM trimmings. First, it was the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP), which Cisco Systems, Inc.'s NetFlow software supports. Now we hear that the WinSock 2 API, championed by Microsoft Corp., provides for user-specified QoS.
This will surely reopen the debate on whether supercharged IP can replace ATM. But there's a more important issue behind the WinSock 2 announcement.
On the surface, there's the classic problem of IP vs. ATM. Can QoS specification capabilities added to TCP/IP, and expedited IP handling in networks through IP switching, provide enough QoS to undermine the basic ATM value proposition?
IP proponents point out that LANs are nondeterministic today because LAN applications have not specified QoS in the past. This understandably put QoS assurance on the router vendors' back burner.
But RSVP is a kind of offline signaling protocol that lets users specify QoS for any IP application, without even changing the application program itself. WinSock 2 lets new applications specify...