Jean Le Mezec and Manuel Barbero
In many areas of telecommunications, France has pointed the way for the rest of the world. A couple of months ago, commercial ATM service was introduced in France as a nationwide service--just as ISDN and (some years back) Minitel terminals have been made universally available throughout the country. French businesses, researchers, and even some home users will be able to access France Telecom's CBDS (Connectionless Broadband Data Service), which is quite similar to the U.S.'s SMDS (Switched Multimegabit Data Service) but offers the high speeds possible only over an ATM network.
France Telecom is one of the first major communications carriers to incorporate ATM throughout its core network. CBDS was available in beta testing since July in Paris, Lyons, and the re
gion around Nice. Commercial beta testers included Hewlett-Packard, Dassault, Thomson-CSF, the research group Inria, and France's highest-rated TV network, TF1. For the beta users, CBDS offered virtual private networks at speeds ranging from 2 to 25 Mbps. The service offers multiple protocols, with interfaces to the Internet, Token Ring, and FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface).
Although France may be a bit ahead of the U.S. in ATM use, both countries are following similar paths. As in the U.S., the France Telecom project began with a government-supported ``information superhighway,'' connecting the research community first and then spreading out to commercial users. ATM, which was developed at France Telecom in the early 1980s, is widely seen in both Europe and the U.S. as the best way to provide many options for interconnecting LANs and WANs. The U.S. has given the Internet to the world, and a fully ATM-connected Internet is a common dream.
Renater, which is France's broadband extension of
the Internet, was begun only in 1991, and it is now being given an ATM backbone with 34-Mbps E-3 connections to subscribing networks. Renater is a cooperative venture of universities and government agencies; the network is built and managed by France Telecom, and it has been the test-bed for ATM networking in France.
European networking experiments have often been international in scope. For example, an early ATM link between the Swiss CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) and CEA (France's atomic energy commission) allowed nuclear experiments to be controlled at points located hundreds of miles away from the actual laboratory. Similarly, a 1993 demonstration of CBDS was the first transatlantic ATM linkup. Over a 2-Mbps dedicated line, groups in Paris and New York were able to simultaneously use InSoft's Communique groupware running on Sun Microsystems' SparcStations equipped with Parallax Graphics video boards. Also involved in that transatlantic linkup were Cisco Systems' AGS+ Ethernet rout
er and Thomson-CSF's Thomflex ATM network concentrator. Much of the technology, of course, is American; the goal was to create an international network that was compatible with commonly used U.S. networks and multimedia products.
Upgrading to ATM is a project that involves widespread European and international cooperation. France Telecom is just one of 18 telecommunications providers working together in Europe's ATM pilot initiative. In addition, the company has formed the Atlas joint venture with Deutsche Telekom and is planning a partnership with Sprint in the U.S. Because of its joint venture with ATM-switch supplier Alcatel, Sprint already has a working knowledge of the ATM switches that France Telecom is using. There is a considerable amount of transatlantic capacity right now, so intercontinental ATM and CBDS will soon be just as feasible as ATM in Europe.
What does this mean for BYTE readers, most of whom are in the U.S.? For the average user, ATM and CBDS mean full Ethernet or Ethernet-l
ike connectivity at high speed to remote databases, and the use of groupware with coworkers located almost anyplace else, all with protocol-independent file transfers and messaging.
The more remote the locations that must interact, the more vital become high-speed communications links. CBDS and ATM provide better ways to not only connect U.S. and international offices and provide easier access to more remote databases but also provide virtually instantaneous electronic travel to Paris, at rates that are considerably less expensive than taking a hop on the Concorde.
Jean Le Mezec is vice president of science and technology, and Manuel Barbero is vice president of North American marketing for France Telecom. They can be reached on the Internet or BIX at
editors@bix.com
.
ATM with a French Accent
