re:
Capacity ".... as measured by OC12-miles,
doubles every four months..."
Now that's a fascinating form of metric in itself.
Distance * bit-rate equals capacity? What happened
to the 'traffic' component? Likewise, what does this
say regarding the various thresholds for refreshing
bandwidth that individual operators have set as
defaults, i.e., 20%, or 50%, or even 90%, before
pulling the trigger and lighting up the next OC 'n'?
Some providers tweaked 'n tuned their networks until
the cows came home, others threw bandwidth 'lavishly'
at the first inkling of the next plateau being reached.
Even full disclosure by all Tier Ones concerning the
number of OC-12 ports they were using, under these
conditions, couldn't give an accurate picture of
actual traffic levels being supported, IMO.
It's a measure of *capacity*, not traffic. If you string up 1 1GE line or a
bundle of 24 100GE, that's the *capacity* of the path, even if there's only 600
mbits/sec actually flowing. Remember your car's gas tank only hold 17.6 gallons
of gas, whether you drive enough that you buy gas every Monday and Thursday, or
so little you only buy gas on the 3rd of every month.
And adding miles as a component has its uses - stringing an OC-12 across a
meet-me room is less of a challenge than lighting up a Boston-San Diego link.
Distance * bit-rate equals capacity? What happened to the 'traffic'
component?
traffic is not a component of capacity. capicity is an upper bound on
traffic.
randy