Are people still building SONET networks from scratch?

Sun Sep 9 06:15:35 UTC 2012

On 9/8/12, Måns Nilsson <mansaxel at besserwisser.org> wrote:
> Subject: Re: Are people still building SONET networks from scratch? Date:
> Just the fact that BFD had to be reinvented shows that there is ample
> reason to prefer the steady-train-of-frames-with-status of SONET/SDH over
> perhaps-nobody-sent-a-packet-or-the-line-is-dead quagmire of Ethernet --

Not all Ethernet switching implementations are necessarily equal;
there are 802.3ah  OA&M and 802.1ag connectivity fault management /
Loopback (MAC ping) / Continuity Check Protocol / Link Trace.   (Which
aren't much use without management software, however.)

There  /are/  reasons to prefer SONET for certain networks or
applications; so it might (or might not)  be a reasonable requirement,
it just depends.

Price is not one of those reasons;  all the added complexity and use
of less common equipment has some major costs, not to mention risks,
involved if mixing many different service providers' products.  SONET
comes at a massive price premium per port and switching table entry on
hardware modules that are much more expensive than 10g switches,  and
providers often charge a big premium regardless...

Therefore; it is not the least bit surprising that a 10g wave would be
massively less expensive in many cases than an OC3 over a long
distance between point A and point B.

As I see it... if you are thinking of 1000 miles of dark fiber to
nowhere to support an OC3, then forget  the "wasted" capacity;   the
cost of all that dark fiber needed just for them should get added to
the customer's price quote for the OC3.

Same deal if instead you need an OC48 at various hops to actually
carry that OC3 and be able to end-to-end and tunnel the DCC bytes over
IP  or restrict equipment choices so you can achieve that D1-12 byte
transparency....

--
-JH