Last week, an article in InfoWorld reported that the IEEE was beginning to lay the groundwork for standardizing 100 Gigabit Ethernet networks. While this is an interesting development, and is sure to advance networking science and industry, it's totally unneeded from my perspective.

Under the heading of Quality of Service (QoS), a variety of technologies promise administrators improved control over the data that travels across their networks, though none provide more bandwidth or less latency. Instead, they help you manage your existing resources so important traffic flows smoothly. In this article, we will help you pinpoint the most appropriate technologies for enterprisewide traffic management.

If 1997 was a banner year for the networking industry, bringing a hoard of new technologies and products, then 1998 was the morning after, with most of us trying to make 1997's technology work. Rather than giving us whole new technologies, vendors spent 1998 trying to fix the half-baked technologies that were introduced in 1997. Sometimes it worked, with some products and technologies permanently altering the landscape, while others just proved that some technologies weren't really such great ideas after all.

Network-multimedia is becoming almost commonplace, with technologies like Voice-over-IP and LAN-based video-conferencing proving to be viable alternatives to their circuit-based counterparts. Yet, network-multimedia has some pretty stringent requirements in order for it to work successfully. The original Ethernet - with its shared-access coaxial network that depended on luck in order to function - is woefully unsuited for the job.

In short, this system is highly configurable but at this point it is hobbled somewhat by its nonconfigurable elements. A typical corporate user needs built-in Ethernet support more than some of the multimedia services that come with the Tecra 8000. However, I expect that this situation will change as Toshiba improves upon their build-to-order capabilities.

Support for forward-compatibility in network design is becoming a crucial issue, particularly as new technologies that push the envelope of network utilization are being deployed. As a result, many of the core elements of today's data networks are being retrofitted to allow these new technologies to work reliably. In some cases, entirely new protocols are being developed to get around those protocols that are so inflexible that they cannot accommodate any sort of tweaking.

To handle network congestion across your entire network, you must first provide for the prioritization of IP traffic. Doing this effectively raises a series of design questions. Does your internal network support IP-prioritization services? Does your WAN equipment? What about your Internet service provider? What about the infrastructure at the other end of the connection? If any device between two systems cannot provide IP-prioritization services, you won't be able to implement an end-to-end solution.

Leading the 802.11 pack is Lucent, which recently introduced its WaveLAN line of wireless products capable of sending traffic at speeds as fast as 2Mbps -- at distances as far as 1,200 feet in unobstructed environments. They can even fall back to speeds of 1Mbps at distances as far as 1,400 feet or in environments that are heavily obstructed.

With the increased availability of network-centric multimedia and voice-over-IP services, the growth curve for network utilization is being thrown out the window. As such, a need for prioritization on Ethernet has become much more urget. Coming to the rescue are the IEEE 802.1p and 802.1Q specifications, which promise to turn Ethernet into a managed-access medium on par with Token Ring and FDDI.

Every so often, a product comes along that has the potential to change the way we work. Although Novatel Wireless' Minstrel Wireless IP Modem isn't earthshaking on its own, when used in conjunction with a 3Com PalmPilot Professional or IBM WorkPad handheld computer and some Internet-based applications, it's a dazzler. It allows truly mobile, wireless, pen-based access to standards-driven applications.

Network infrastructure products such as hubs, switches, and routers are not exactly 'mainstream' products. Dayna Communications hopes to change that trend with its NetCenter infrastructure products for the mass market. The products should appeal to network novices at small sites, but their simplicity and lack of configurability make them unsuited for enterprise use.

If your company has laptop users in highly mobile environments that require access to wireless networks at Ethernet speeds, the RadioLAN PC Card Wireless Interface Node provides a fourfold increase over most other wireless LAN offerings. Although RadioLAN has long offered 10Mbps wireless transceivers, the company has not provided them in PC Card form until now.