IP over SONET considered harmful?

Mon Mar 23 01:29:42 UTC 1998

Mike Trest (In Japan) wrote:

> At 06:32 AM 3/21/98 -0800, Sean M. Doran wrote:
> >| Native IP over fiber is not a religion; it's a solid engineering.
> >snip<
>
> >SDH/SONET is also a really keen way of sharing a network
> >among IP and other things on the wide-area side, and
> >an even keener way of having access to relatively low-speed
> >customer data on the more local side.
>
> Both in US and In Japan, SONET/SDH systems are used to deliver such non-IP
> traffic as CATV/Video over the same physical facilities as IP traffic.
>

If your on TCG fiber in the Boston area chances are very likely your IPpackets
are squeezed in between "The US versus Larry Flint" care of
MediaOne SONET :)

> Indeed, I can walk you into a top-rated commercial television station using
> a large Unix box with six ATM-over-SONET interfaces to drive video
> broadcast streams to the stations' live broadcast to millions of viewers.
> The same interfaces also transport TCP-IP application control data between
> Unix  and the various off-line editing systems and the graphic development
> engines (MAC/W'95).
>
> You should not think that the prospect of internet based viewers are
> outside the planning horizion of commercial broadcast industry, even if
> that industry consists of predominately time critical (non-IP traffic)
> today.
>
> Some major players in this industry agree that the mixture of SONET/SDH
> with both IP and ATM traffic is "really keen".
>
> ..mike..