From pfredette@ids.net Thu Sep 14 11:52:34 1995 Return-Path: Received: from ids.net by alumni with SMTP (8.6.4/DEI:4.41) id LAA07943; Thu, 14 Sep 1995 11:52:28 -0700 Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 11:52:28 -0700 Message-Id: <199509141852.LAA07943@alumni> Received: from ids.net ([155.212.203.7]) by ids.net with SMTP; Thu, 14 Sep 1995 14:52:15 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender: pfredette@ids.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: dank@alumni.caltech.edu From: pfredette@ids.net (Paul Fredette, Promptus Communications) Subject: Info on BONDING protocol Cc: alucci@ins.net Status: RO Dear Dan: Ref: "Info on the BONDING protocol" in "About ISDN" on your WWW page. Let me introduce myself as the current Chairman of the BONDING Technical Committee. Mr. H. Sharp who supplied the files on BONDING was the previous chairman. I am also Chief Technical Officer of Promptus Communications, Inc. of Portsmouth RI which can be found in your existing ISDN page references. Thank you for maintaining the page. I would like to point out that while the note on RFC 1618 is technically correct, the RFC was written in 1994 and no subsequent action was referred to the BONDING consortium for debate. Since that time, BONDING has in fact become the defacto worldwide standard for channel aggregation in video conferencing using ISDN and is currently an ISO document (ISO IEC 13871). It is also heavily used for interconnection of routers and/or backup of dedicated inter-router links. As channel aggregation methodology is likely to be a lively topic based on other recent RFCs like 1717, I would hope that you might append this information on your ISDN page and help include the Bonding Consortium in future discussion on the Internet. An additional note that I think would be of interest to your readers. The September 26, 1995 issue of the Network Edition of PC magazine (Page NE12 on "Working Together Using ISDN" ) referred to BONDING as "an important control protocol in ISDN channel aggregation" and then without explanation of BONDING or its advantages, chose to editorialize by adding "Fortunately, a standard is beginning to emerge: IETF's RFC 1717..." . How fortunate this is remains to be seen. Emerging things can have problems. Comments welcome. Some of RFC1618 comments on BONDING are dealt with in another ITU standard H.244 which defines simple extensions to the BONDING method. BONDING was created to provide an open standard (no license required) for aggregation and in fact has done so due to the diligent efforts of a number of individuals and companies around the world. My Email address is: pfredette@ins.net and I would appreciate receiving commentary on the subject .