FYI: 802 in the telecom trade press
The magazine _Telecommunications_ <http://www.telecoms-mag.com>
covers "service provider technologies and applications." Until
recently, I don't think that this sort of publication had much
interest in 802.
Things have changed. For the May 2000 cover story,
_Telecommunications_ chose "The 10 Hottest Technologies" (where "hot"
means "capable of entering the mainstream of telecom
systems/operations within one to two years, while now having
sufficient development dollars and industry support to become
economically viable").
<http://tcs-prod.weblabs.com/issues/200005/tcs/hottest.html>
Two of the "10 Hottest Technologies" are being done in 802. Here is
the first paragraph of the two articles:
Time Division Duplexing: Maximizing Spectrum
Like the CDMA-TDMA-GSM debate in mobile wireless networks, a similar
battle is brewing in fixed wireless: frequency division duplexing
(FDD) vs. time division duplexing (TDD). But unlike the mobile world,
action in the local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) spectrum,
with the exception of two or three notable carriers, has been a case
of all talk and less-than-widespread deployment. Air interface
standards, currently being worked on in the IEEE's 802.16 committee
to deal with issues such as interference and interoperability, could
help change that, propelling broadband wireless to a $7.4 billion
market for services by 2003, according to the Strategis Group.
10-Gigabit Ethernet: Riding the Cost Curve
Tried-and-true Ethernet will make its way to the WAN later this year
in the form of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE). The IEEE 802.3ae task
force plans to have a draft standard based on the well-recognized
protocol out in September that is compatible with WAN and LAN
infrastructures, eliminating time-consuming protocol conversions.
Customer trials will be later this year and prestandards commercial
products are expected in Q1 2001 from vendors including Foundry,
Nortel, 3Com and Extreme Networks, which are four of the seven
founders of the 10-Gigabit Ethernet Alliance formed in January.
Roger