IP over SONET considered harmful?

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1

Like IP over raw fiber. Our friendly WDM vendors would love to get rid
of SONET. SS7? What's that? :wink:

Sorry, gotta weigh in here...

As great as POS is, and as exciting as running IP on optical OC-48 onto WDM
gear sounds (no piece of cake, believe me...), there is STILL room for
ATM. More than just the much-touted network traffic engineering value, too.

Simply put, because of the B-ISDN heritage of ATM, I can actually run
synchronous circuits over it (using circuit emulation) and have it work right.
Can't get there from here with any IP-over-glass solutions, alas.

And as much as an "IP over everything" bigot as I've been for the last
17 years or so, I still run into situations where what I *HAVE* to
have is some kind of synchronous circuit. Wish it weren't so, but I can't
just tell people "oh, you can't do that"...

Stan

2

And as much as an "IP over everything" bigot as I've been for the last
17 years or so, I still run into situations where what I *HAVE* to
have is some kind of synchronous circuit. Wish it weren't so, but I can't
just tell people "oh, you can't do that"...

So you put in a parallel SONET/TDM infrastructure for volume deployment of
TDM services. There is no way that CBR over ATM is economic in the large.
And if you are trying to solve a smaller TDM problem, there is lots of good
gear that could be wedged into a WDM fabric to deliver smaller volumes.
Either
way, this use of ATM will not prolong its lifespan. The numbers just do not
work.

Eric Carroll
Tekton Internet Associates