5. Yeh is reserching a VLSI approach to building high-bandwidth
parallel processing packet switch.
6. Bell Labs is working on a Metropolitan Area Network called
"Manhattan Street Net." This work, under Dr. Maxemchuck, is
similar to Blazenet. It is in the prototype stage for a small
number of street intersections; ultimately it is meant to be
city-wide. Like Blazenet, is uses photonic switching 2 x 2
lithium niobate block switches.
7. Ultra Network Technologies is a Silicon Valley company which
has a (prototype) Gbit/s fiber link which connects backplanes.
This is based on the ISO-TP4 transport protocol.
8. Jonathan Turner, Washington University, is working on a
Batcher-Banyan Multicast Net, based on the "SONET" concept,
which provides 150 Mbit/s per pipe.
9. David Sincowskie, Bellcore, is working with Batcher-Banyan
design and has working 32x32 switches.
10. Stratacom has a commercial product which is really a T1 voice
switch implemented internally by a packet switch, where the
packet is 192 bits (T1 frame). This switch can pass 10,000
packets per second.
11. Stanford NAB provides 30-50 Mbit/s throughput on 100 Mbit/s
connection using Versatile Message Transaction Protocol (VMTP)
[see RFC1045]
12. The December issue of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
Communications, provides much detail concerning interconnects.
13. Ultranet Technology has a 480 Mbit/s connection using modified
ISO TP4.
14. At MIT, Dave Clark has an architecture proposal of interest.
15. At CMU, the work of Eric Cooper is relevant.
16. At Protocol Engines, Inc., Greg Chesson is working on an XTP-
based system.
17. Larry Landweber at Wisconsin University is doing relevant
work.
18. Honeywell is doing relevant work for NASA.
19. Kung at CMU is working on a system called "Nectar" based on a
STARLAN on fiber connecting dissimilar processors.
20. Burroughs (now Unisys) has some relevant work within the IEEE
802.6 committee.
21. Bellcore work in "Switched Multimedia Datanet Service" (SMDS)
is relevant (see paper supplied by Dave Clark).
22. FDDI-2, a scheme for making TDMA channel allocations at 200
Mbit/s.
23. NRI, Kahn-Farber Proposal to NSF, is a paper design for high-
bandwidth network.
24. Barry Goldstein work, IBM-Yorktown.
25. Bell Labs S-Net, 1280 Mbit/s prototype.
26. Fiber-LAN owned by Bell South and SECOR, a pre-prototype 575
Mbit/s Metro Area Net.
27. Bellcore chip implementation of FASTNET (1.2 Gbit/s).
28. Scientific Computer Systems, San Diego, 1.4 Gbit/s prototype.
29. BBN Monarch Switch, Space Division pre-prototype, chips being
fabricated, 64 Mbit/s per path.
30. Proteon, 80 Mbit/s token ring.
31. Toronto University, 150 Mbit/s "tree"--- really a LAN.
32. NSC Hyperchannel II, reputedly available at 250 Mbit/s.
33. Tobagi at Stanford working on EXPRESSNET; not commercially
available.
34. Columbia MAGNET-- 150 Mbit/s.
35. Versatile Message Transaction Protocol (VMTP).
36. ST integrated with IP.
37. XTP (Chesson).
38. Stanford Transport Gateway.
39. X.25/X.75.
40. Work of the Internet Activities Board.
B. Gigabit Working Group Members
Member Affiliation
Gordon Bell Ardent Computers
Steve Blumenthal BBN Laboratories
Vint Cerf Corporation for National Research Initiatives
David Cheriton Stanford University
David Clark Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Barry Leiner (Chairman) Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science
Robert Lyons Defense Communication Agency
Richard Metzger Rome Air Development Center
David Mills University of Delaware
Kevin Mills National Bureau of Standards
Chris Perry MITRE
Jon Postel USC Information Sciences Institute
Nachum Shacham SRI International
Fouad Tobagi Stanford University
End Notes
[1] Workshop on Computer Networks, 17-19 February 1987, San Diego,
CA.
[2] "A Report to the Congress on Computer Networks to Support
Research in the United States: A Study of Critical Problems and
Future Options", White House Office of Scientific and Technical
Policy (OSTP), November 1987.
[3] We distinguish in the report between development of a backbone
network providing gigabit capacity, the GB, and an
interconnected set of high-speed networks providing high-
bandwidth service to the user, the Gigabit Network (GN).
[4] Incidentally, they already manage to serve 150 million
subscribers in an 11-digit address-space (about 1:600 ratio).
We have a 9.6-digit address-space and are running into troubles
with much less than 100,000 users (less than 1:30,000 ratio).