IP over SONET considered harmful?

Sat Mar 21 08:37:10 UTC 1998

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

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
--
Stanley P. Hanks
Vice President, Engineering / FirstPoint Communications (an Enron company)
210 SW Morrison St., Suite 400 / Portland OR 97204
vox (503) 464-8480 / fax (503) 464-2042 / email stan_hanks at firstpoint.net