While general agreement has been reached on retaining Ethernet, Sonet and IP/MPLS everywhere in the network, there is still a plethora of potential architectures for multiplexing traffic between the edge and metro core. Corporate LAN managers tend to prefer Ethernet-oriented architectures that add support for Sonet and MPLS, because they are most familiar with Ethernet protocols and with traffic patterns centered on best-effort packet data. However, Kevin Wade, marketing director at Turin, said that corporate network managers who have had to lease T1/T3 lines from carriers, or who subscribe to frame relay services, recognize the value in preserving TDM capabilities at the network edge.
Incumbent carriers, on the other hand, presuppose the existence of Sonet. Though many are learning the value of MPLS at the network core, traditional carriers treat Ethernet and MPLS as features to augment existing TDM Sonet backbones. Depending on the vagaries of the framing and encapsulation chip architectures selected by the OEMs, the aggregation boxes can make subtle distinctions in how traffic is combined for delivery to the core.
Fiber-based transport is assumed for the metro ring and, particularly, for supermetro regions, where speeds of 10 and 40 Gbits/s dominate. But it is not enough to assume that raw bandwidth can be thrown at traffic-prioritization problems. Hatteras CEO Kevin Sheehan pointed out that carriers of all types want to transport data, voice and video, which means carrying multiple streams of multimegabit services to compete with existing analog and digital cable TV.
Also, many neighborhoods offer no optical connections, either passive or active, to individual buildings. Therefore, traffic aggregators must assume copper transport in the final mile to the end user. Hatteras' Ethernet systems thus are optimized for copper transport.
The ultimate problem, though, is that business conditions for startups are only marginally better than they were in 2000-01. John Metz, president of market research firm Metz International, noted that more than $1.2 billion in venture money went into interesting startups with unique edge architectures between 1998 and 2000, and scores of these startups went out of business. Carriers may be buying more equipment than they did during the years when everything went dark, he said, but the safe purchases involve Fortune 1000 companies. "Even new technology that is recognized as superior . . . is not enough to win, or sustain a business long term."
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