Converged Networks Threat (Was: Level3 Outage)

Wed Feb 25 17:44:51 UTC 2004

	Jared,

>> 	I keep hear of Frame-Relay and ATM signaling that is going
>> to happen in large providers MPLS cores.  That's right, your "safe" TDM
>> based services, will be transported over someones IP backbone first.
>> This means if they don't protect their IP network, the TDM services could
>> fail.  These types of CES services are not just limited to Frame and ATM.
>> (Did anyone with frame/atm/vpn services from Level3 experience the
>> same outage?)

	Is your concern that carrying FR/ATM/TDM over a packet
	core (IP or MPLS or ..) will, via some mechanism, reduce
	the resilience of the those services, of the packet core,
	of both, or something else?

>> 	We're at (or already past) the dangerous point of network
>> convergence.  While I suspect that nobody directly died as a result of
>> the recent outage, the trend to link together hospitals, doctors
>> and other agencies via the Internet and a series of VPN clients continues
>> to grow.  (I say this knowing how important the internet is to
>> the medical community, reading x-rays and other data scans at
>> home for the oncall is quite common). 

	Again, I'm unclear as to what constitutes "the dangerous
	point of network convergence", or for that matter, what
	constitutes convergence (I'm sure we have close to a
	common understanding, but its worth making that
	explicit).  In any event, can you be more explicit about
	what you mean here?

	Thanks,

	Dave