long distance gigabit ethernet

Fri Mar 22 17:28:14 UTC 2002

On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 11:54:05AM -0500, Greg Pendergrass wrote:
> 
> I'm going to take a stab and assume that you're actually more interested
> in finding a longhaul line with GigE on the ends, and not so much how many
> miles you can get with whatever optics...
> 
> Absolutely right, I don't care what's in between as long as I have GigE at
> the end. Other options include using wave (too expensive), or ethernet over
> MPLS (worth considering although latency may be too high for longer that
> 1000 miles).

there are solutions of this type. SURFNet line, currently used for test 
and network research is an example. 
It is from Amsterdam to Chicago. It is presented as GigE at the ends.

So fairly long distance, RTT is  93 msec.Actually it  terminate as
SONET OC48  that goes too TDM Switch which has GigE interfaces.
So there is SONET encapsulation in the middle. In theory we can get 
upto  2.5Gbps.  

Line is provided by Teleglobe. End equipements are 
CISCO,  ONS 15454. This don't do any routing.

This page may be interesting to browse.
http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~delaat/optical/index.html

You can probably find different variants of such non standard technology
from other carriers.

-antony