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From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Message-Id: <199611160506.XAA29769@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Subject: Re: changed to: Frac T3?
To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis)
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 23:06:20 -0600 (CST)
Cc: isp@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199611152232.RAA06688@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Nov 15, 96 05:32:10 pm
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> >Cool, do it :-)  The harder you push, the more likely it is someone will
> >take up the challenge of how to route more quickly.
> 
> Gee...what I was hoping to get is what people need.....is there a substantial
> fractional T3 requirement? or does everyone need/want full T3? Would anyone
> buy a 32Mbs card, or is it a waste if it doesnt to full t3? It seems that
> there should
> be a market for relatively low-speed fiber....increasing the clock rate as
> you need
> bandwidth. 20 T1s is a lot of bandwidth.

Hi Dennis,

I guess it depends on whether or not it is sold as an option (by the
networking service provider)...  I usually see people talk about frac-T1,
T1, and then immediately jump to T3.

Translation: I see less of a market for frac-T3 than I do for T3.

In my opinion, if I were you, I would certainly rev up my current 
product to handle frac-T3, on the condition that doing so was not
a MAJOR re-engineering process.  You were mumbling something about
PCI too, and I can see a PCI sync serial card capable of speeds from
56k to frac-T3 as being attractive...  even if you leave the ISA 
stuff alone.

But I am sure you are aware of what is happening in this business.
Modems are getting faster, the percent of households with Internet
connectivity is going up, and the ISP that had a T1 two years ago
now has dual T3's and a hundredfold growth.  Bandwidth is becoming
more and more of an issue, as more people want to move data faster.

If you can provide a T3-capable card, that may have applications 
in large Internet server environments, in addition to router
environments.

As for me: would I buy one?  No.  I do not see my own bandwidth needs
exceeding dual-T1 within a year, and at those rates, I would go dual-T1
for redundancy's sake.

... JG