Without even voting on Vancouver, British Coloumbia-based PMC-Sierra Inc’s specification for a 25Mbps Asynchronous Transfer Mode standard (CI No 2,516), the ATM Forum has effectively killed it off, and adopted the rival proposal from the Desktop ATM25 Alliance (CI No 2,506). The ATM25 specification has now been adopted as a baseline text (CI No 2,607). At the Forum’s next meeting in April, it will be fine-tuned and sent out for a straw vote. If this is successful, it would pave the way for a letter ballot in June, meaning that the specification could be completed and formally adopted by August. The decision to go with the Alliance’s specification is the result of procedural manoeuvering, according to Vernon Little, Sierra’s Manager of LAN Products. After a detailed presentation of both specifications, Sierra proposed a motion to have its 25.9Mbps specification adopted. This motion was tabled pending further discussions, and another motion, that the Forum should adopt only one specification for 25Mbps Asynchronous Transfer Mode, was proposed and passed. The Desktop ATM25 Alliance then put its specification to the vote and was successful in getting the majority it needed to have the standard adopted, with the Sierra motion still on hold. Little said the chain of events is indicative of problems with the Forum’s structure. It requires only a simple majority in order to adopt a standard although other standards groups require a consensus vote. And since voting membership can be bought for $10,000, it enables big business to manipulate a group that claims to be consumer-focussed, said Little. Despite these problems, Little said it is unlikely that Sierra will lobby for the Forum to change its set-up, since the majority vote rule does have the advantage of getting standards adopted quickly and if we pull on this loose thread on the Forum, the whole sweater could unravel. Little is, nevertheless, critical of what he sees as the machinations that led to Sierra’s specification being sidelined. He said that the rival groups met before the meeting and agreed that they would work together to have both proposals adopted. The Desktop ATM25 Alliance then reneged on this, he said. Philip Richards, marketing vice-president at ATM25 Alliance member TranSwitch, denied this, saying that Sierra had the opportunity to make its case and lost because the Alliance’s specification was cheaper, available immediately, and was widely supported within the industry.
Relatively little demand
Sierra said that it will not build products conforming to the ATM25 Alliance specification, but will go ahead and build products based on its own proposal. It is taking this course, said Little, since its feedback has shown that there is relatively little demand for 25Mbps Asynchronous Mode. While it believes that its fractional Synchronous Optical Network-based specification is a viable one since it can be implemented cheaply and scaled up for faster speeds, it does not see a market for products based on the Desktop ATM25 specification, which is incompatible with the faster speeds. The company says it may also try and resubmit its specification to the Forum, but has not decided on a course of action yet. But its chances of having it adopted now seem pretty remote, as it would require the Forum either to drop the ATM25 specification, or to reverse its vote on opting for only one standard. The 25Mbps vote was the main news from the Forum’s meeting, but there was also a lot of interest in Tut Systems Inc’s new technology, which is said to enable 155Mbps Asynchronous Transfer Mode performance over Category 3 unshielded twisted pair cabling (CI No 2,604). As predicted, however, this was at too early a stage through the Forum to impact on the 25Mbps votes – although Little said that it could greatly influence the debate in the longer term. Also at the meeting, the LAN Emulation Group started work on version 2.0 of its specification, although this mainly consisted of trying to decide what enhancements are needed to it.
