June 2000 'Packet-ed' and Ready to Fly By Peter Horner Level 3 Communications is betting the farm that Internet Protocol (IP) technology utilizing "packet" switching will make its 24,000-mile, international communications network the most efficient in the world. A company promotion piece explains the state-of-the-art technology this way: "To better understand the difference between packet switching and traditional circuit switching, consider a highway between two cities. Traditional circuit switching technology commits an entire lane of highway to one car for the duration of its trip. IP-based technology fills all lanes with traffic, allowing multiple cars in each lane." In essence, packet switching breaks voice, data and video transmissions into small bits. The bits then fly through the network, free to find whatever line is available at the time while avoiding bottlenecks along the way. Each bit has the same coded address, so they end up at the same place where they are electronically reassembled. That's the theory. There are still a few bugs that need to be worked out, but Crowe and company are certain they are on the right track — the fast one. Return to the main article Something to Crowe About Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 2000 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Street, Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060, USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 1999, 2000 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.