IXC Fiber cut Michigan

Sun May 16 02:58:13 UTC 1999

hcb at clark.NET (Howard C. Berkowitz) writes:
>Is this another argument for SONET rings and against tree structuring?

It is an argument for diversity.  SONET rings offer diversity against
certain failure modes, but they too have other types of interesting
failures.  SONET failures tend to be more complex, and so far seem to
take much, much longer to fix than a simple fiber cut.

SONET rings have several good points.  What is not good is thinking the
buzzword "SONET" as uttered by salespeople (and some engineers) means more
than it actually is.  Automatic Protection Switches exist in the copper
world too.  Phone companies have been selling APS systems for decades, they
still have trouble actually delivering on those promises.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation