What the Infranet is, is two things: A vision for where we want to get to; and more importantly, it gives you a path from where we are today. It's very easy to put forth a vision, then stop there. That leaves a harder and open question of how do we get there.
The main reason current situation is untenable is that neither the half-a-dozen to dozen different technologies, nor the best-effort Internet, solves the problem of making carriers money. The first, because it's too expensive; the second, because it doesn't support the applications where you can make money. So you have a quandry, and what do you do?
The first question we asked ourselves, we believe is already answered. [That question is,] is it possible to build a single infrastructure, based on IP, that can support a very broad range of communications applications? The answer to that question is yes. There's been a debate in the industry for the longest time, [but] I think that debate is largely now settled. People used to disbelieve whether a switched infrastructure could support broad array of applications. The answer is, yes it can.
Now -- once you've answered that in the affirmative, whether IP and MPLS is the right technology, and you say yes, they are the right underlying technologies, then you ask, what is the gap analysis between where the Internet is today, and where the Infranet needs to be? No question about the fact that the base technologies, IP and MPLS, are the right ones, so what's missing?
There's really three categories of things that are missing:
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