If there is something we ought to know, we welcome proposals for articles. Trouble is, how carriers and ISPs will bill for these services remains unclear. Traditional carriers still have the distance-billing mindset, which irks multinational user companies with hundreds of offices worldwide, Ranum says. As for quality of service, that's only guaranteed if you stay within one service provider's network. When you hop to another, the bandwidth and speed depend on how well the two providers' nets co mmunicate, he says.
Most carriers refer to their intranet services as precursors to VPNs and frame relay service.
Only The Beginning Now that Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems have joined the Salutation Consortium, the org anization is shaking off its rap as just a bunch of fax and copier companies looking for a way to push office machines into the networked age. But don't read too much into Cisco and Sun's participation, experts warn. Andrew Johnson, a senior industry analyst at Dataquest, says the consortium is still struggling to get its arms around using the Internet for these devices. With the ability to determine the best path for routing data packets, routers are a fundamental component for any enterprisewide network. Network Computing's editors challenged vendors to devise fault-tolerant storage solutions, and you're invited to watch them face off and present their answers.