Ethernet to extend to distances of up to 100 meters over Unshielded Twisted Pair Category 5 (Cat 5) copper wiring, the primary cabling medium inside buildings. Representatives from approximately 120 networking, computer, component and test equipment companies participated in the Alliance. Concurrently, the group began work on an enhanced version of Category 5 wiring and Category 6 and Category 7 wiring standards. For most applications, Cat 5 will be adequate for the foreseeable future because it easily handles 10 Mbps Ethernet, and even 100 Mbps Ethernet. However, 1000B-T will require all four pairs of the Cat 5 cable rather than the two pairs that previous LAN technologies required. Enhanced Cat 5 was created to address this and to remedy crosstalk and line noise issues that are related to Gigabit Ethernet. Category 6 cabling can run at 200 MHz, twice as fast as Cat 5, and Category 7 would run at 600 MHz. These robust cables will have their places, but businesses that require a network faster than Gigabit Ethernet will adopt fiber optics. ATM-NOT JUST A PLACE TO GET CASH Enterprise networks are undergoing profound changes. Even as the bridged or routed LAN-based internetworking model is being assimilated, a cell-switched architecture, that is ideally suited to carrying multimedia traffic, is being overlooked. Of course, we are referring to ATM. Specifically designed to carry different types of traffic, ATM leverages the gigabit speeds offered by fiber-optic cable. It was designed to provide scalable, broadband, low-latency, cell-switched services that fuse the LAN into the WAN and computer networks into telephone networks. ATM easily supports high loads of converged data, voice, and video traffic. Standards for managing service quality, bandwidth allocation, network latency, and data flows have long been established for ATM. These issues are still dogging Ethernet. Nevertheless, Ethernet is what network administrators know, and it is the clear winner. ATM technology has not entered the mainstream of enterprise n