Are people still building SONET networks from scratch?

Sun Sep 9 06:55:15 UTC 2012

Subject: Re: Are people still building SONET networks from scratch? Date: Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 01:15:35AM -0500 Quoting Jimmy Hess (mysidia at gmail.com):
> On 9/8/12, Måns Nilsson <mansaxel at besserwisser.org> wrote:
> > Subject: Re: Are people still building SONET networks from scratch? Date:
> > Just the fact that BFD had to be reinvented shows that there is ample
> > reason to prefer the steady-train-of-frames-with-status of SONET/SDH over
> > perhaps-nobody-sent-a-packet-or-the-line-is-dead quagmire of Ethernet --
> 
> Not all Ethernet switching implementations are necessarily equal;
> there are 802.3ah  OA&M and 802.1ag connectivity fault management /
> Loopback (MAC ping) / Continuity Check Protocol / Link Trace.   (Which
> aren't much use without management software, however.)

Of course. 

> There  /are/  reasons to prefer SONET for certain networks or
> applications; so it might (or might not)  be a reasonable requirement,
> it just depends.

Yes. 

> Price is not one of those reasons;  all the added complexity and use
> of less common equipment has some major costs, not to mention risks,
> involved if mixing many different service providers' products.  SONET
> comes at a massive price premium per port and switching table entry on
> hardware modules that are much more expensive than 10g switches,  and
> providers often charge a big premium regardless...

Yes. The 6x difference I alluded to was a comparison of line cards for
OC192 and 10GE on major league routers, like CRS or T-series. Most of
the bits are the same, yet the price \delta is insane.

> Therefore; it is not the least bit surprising that a 10g wave would be
> massively less expensive in many cases than an OC3 over a long
> distance between point A and point B.

Especially since it might be possible to get it provisioneed e2e. 

> As I see it... if you are thinking of 1000 miles of dark fiber to
> nowhere to support an OC3, then forget  the "wasted" capacity;   the
> cost of all that dark fiber needed just for them should get added to
> the customer's price quote for the OC3.

Yup. 

> Same deal if instead you need an OC48 at various hops to actually
> carry that OC3 and be able to end-to-end and tunnel the DCC bytes over
> IP  or restrict equipment choices so you can achieve that D1-12 byte
> transparency....

I'm a simple man. I just want the bitpipe to do IP over. It so happens
that the combined engineering of the telco business made for a nice
set of signalling bells and whistles that tend to work well on long
point-to-point circuits. If not perfectly well, then at least orders of
magnitude better than a protocol that was designed to sometimes convey
frames over one nautical mile of yellow coax.

Then again, the yellow coax has evolved, significantly. 

-- 
Måns Nilsson     primary/secondary/besserwisser/machina
MN-1334-RIPE                             +46 705 989668
Didn't I buy a 1951 Packard from you last March in Cairo?
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