Crosscomm Corp’s director of IBM Internetworking, Bill Kwan, has been elaborating on the company’s decision to de-prioritise Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (CI No 2,636). In addition to the reasons already outlined, including development work being too lengthy and expensive a process, he said the company is also not convinced that Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking is the best solution for integrating Systems Network Architecture traffic onto backbone routers. Kwan does, however, believe that Peer-to-Peer will still have a role in enterprise networks but says that where APPN is deployed is the key. While it will not necessarily be deployed in users’ backbones, it will nevertheless find a place on end nodes – mainframes, AS/400s, and personal computers – he said. Two reasons make widespread Advanced Peer-to-Peer backbone deployment unlikely, said Kwan: firstly, a more dynamic protocol is needed for the backbone router; and secondly, the emergence of other technologies, notably Frame Relay and Data Link Switching, has reduced the appeal of Peer-to-Peer Networking for users that are migrating from legacy protocol networks. Crosscomm also cites delays in IBM Corp getting around to shipping its High Performance Routing enhancement to Peer-to-Peer Networking as another reason for its move, since it feels that without High Performance Routing, Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking was of no interest to users. Kwan was at pains to emphasise that Crosscomm has not abandoned Advanced Peer-to-Peer development work altogether, but that it is adopting a wait-and-see approach. We’re not as big as Cisco, we cannot afford to do everything just because it’s there, he declared.
