When you do that, you are doing two things which are bad. Number one is that you've damaged the any-to-any ability of networks by carving things into silos that don't communicate with each other. You rob the value that you can otherwise provide. Number two, because the technologies and the skill sets needed to run these diverse networks are different, you don't have economies of scale anymore. The same carrier might have to employ three or four different sets of people, one for each network type.
Advanced IP Pipeline: You're talking about Frame Relay, ATM.
Sindhu: I'm talking about the TDM network, the Frame Relay network, the ATM network, the cable TV network, the mobile network. For one application type, you have a specialized network. That's one situation.
The second situation is the Internet, which started out with the goal of being this ubiquitous network infrastructure that could support lots and lots of applications. If you look at the situation today, there are applications that are not so demanding [of the network], and those that are very, very demanding. The Internet is able to serve the 'best effort' class, which includes e-mail, web browsing, and overnight backup. But it doesn't do a very good job at all of serving those [that are more demanding]. With those applications, you have jitter-sensitive, very high reliability requirements; if the call goes away for more than a few seconds, or even a second, you conclude that something bad has happened.
Generally, more demanding apps have higher reliability, higher quality, and higher security requirements. The Internet doesn't do a very good job of doing that.
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