Weekend Gedankenexperiment - The Kill Switch

Sat Feb 5 05:39:29 UTC 2011

On 2/4/2011 11:13 AM, Charles N Wyble wrote:
>
> How much phone service would still work, if the feds hit all the major 
> IX points and terminate
> connectivity? I seem to recall much discussion about the all IP back 
> bone of the various large
> carriers (Qwest/ATT).  I guess calls in the same CO and maybe between 
> regional CO's might work.

Yeah, that's the problem. The Internet isn't the Internet. The data 
needs of public Internet have reached a level that it is actually 
cheaper to consider the networks we use to transport that data as our 
primary networks, and run everything else over it as bonus recovery 
revenue (and MPLS became really popular).

Most LECs are at least considering, if they haven't implemented, 
SIP/MGCP from DLC/ONT to local or region soft switches. In addition, 
long distance is increasingly running over pseudowire or SIP trunks.

Cell networks are definitely pushing hard to drop the old T1 circuits 
and cranking up 300mb+ circuits, which often causes the carriers of 
those circuits to backhaul the other cell companies who still require T1 
via pseudowire. They aren't being picky either. I about died laughing 
watching a small LEC setup some feeds for some cell towers. The circuits 
cross 4 different networks with at least 3 different types of transport 
configurations (gpon through a calix E7, which is pure L2 ethernet, 
Lucent DMX ethernet over sonet, and a high end Alacatel IP/MPLS network 
which I'm sure carries Internet traffic as well).

Jack