Cisco, the evergreen networking stock with a market capitalisation exceeding that of its rivals put together, is "on the right path" with its vision of IP convergence and its general future direction, said one attendee at this year`s Networkers event.
Reinhold Fischer, networking engineer in charge of the Munich International Airport network, said his employer had put its money on Cisco. "Our network, consisting of 20 000 ports and 850 network components - such as routers and switches - is almost exclusively Cisco," he said. "Previously, we had a mixed environment."
Munich has an MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) VPN backbone. MPLS is the base technology for a number of applications, but in Munich`s case, it uses it for quality of service assurance, traffic engineering and multicasting.
IP rules
Fischer added that Cisco`s vision of the converged network to deliver all communications, information and multimedia services was "entirely correct". "Sure, other means to do some of the services can be better, but the opportunity to bring them onto one network is great. Of course, as a networker, I would say that, but in some areas, the business case is already very compelling."
He said IP telephony is not sensible everywhere. "But if you have different locations in a region and interconnect the PBXs, then you don`t have the expenses of long-distance calls. Networking is now a stable enough environment to carry voice. In one or two years, IP telephony will be the only answer."
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