“If the technology is widely adopted by other vendors, it could
present a viable alternative to proprietary policy-based network
architectures, most notably that of market leader Cisco
Systems.
“The proposed file formats would… would remove the need for
the policy servers that other vendors are designing into their
solutions, slashing costs, IBM said…”
“IBM has successfully lobbied the Internet Engineering Task
Force, or IETF… to adopt the standard directory file
formats.”
“What we requested was a common information model for how
information is stored in the directory, in order to make that
information more easily retrievable,” said Bruce Dillon, IBM’s
development manager for policy-based networking.”
“We have completely eliminated the need for NT or Embedded NT in
a Cisco router,” Dillon said.”