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Sprint ION's $100/mo, 8Mbps Home Service Tanks
Dr. Zowie writes: "In the current gloomy high speed connection market, a ray of light was Sprint's ION service. For $100/month, they would provide local phone service, long distance service, and 8mbps down, 1mbps up DSL-like digital connection. I've been waiting for the service to turn on to write a review about it -- but the service has been discontinued and all orders are being cancelled. Too bad -- ION was like a geek dream come true." ION was only available to a relative handful of people, but it sure sounded good. Anyone have suggestions for this sort of combination service?
> I worked on the Sprint ION project for over a year > as a software engineer, and I got to know the > system pretty well. Me too. > Sprint decided to implement all of these services > over an ATM network. ATM AAL2 rt-vbr (realtime > variable bit rate) And this is where the train departed the track. The announcement the other day was just the kinetic energy of the derailment catching up from the rear of the train. Had they gone with VoIP instead of whinging on endlessly about bandwidth in the core, the project could have completed long ago. Instead they bought into AAL2 snake oil and got exactly what was predictable two years ago. > and only ION had the capability to provide such high > quality of service features directly into the home > (you need ATM for this level of QoS) BS. This is ATM bigotry. An IP network with diffserv and/or intserv could easily achieve this, and is shipping today. Also: you can run AAL5 over CBR or VBR SVC just as easily as AAL2, and you can use Q.2931 to signal for vc setup just like any other over-complicated L2.