IP and Optical domains?

Sun Jun 19 01:28:58 UTC 2016

Mikael,

Thanks. I was looking at a technical problem. I say this because you may
not have this problem when both are networks are being run by the same
vendor equipment, say Alcatel-Lucent (or Nokia now). What are the technical
problems because of which ISPs need to over-provision when there are IP and
optical domains involved. OR rather let me rephrase my question --  what is
the technical challenge involved in setting up an end to end path between
two IP domains that have an optical domain in between.

Thanks, Glen

On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 3:30 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se>
wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, Glen Kent wrote:
>
> Can somebody shed more light on what it means to say that the IP and
>> optical layers are run as independent kingdoms and why do ISPs need to
>> over-provision?
>>
>
> You have a group that runs fiber+dwdm+sonet(or SDH). You have another
> group that runs IP. When the IP guys ask "please tell us how the optical
> network is designed, and can we coordinate how they're built and btw, we
> want to put DWDM optics in our routers", the answer from the
> fiber+dwdm+sonet group is "no, but we can help you with transport using our
> transponders, please just order circuits, just give us addresses for each
> end and we'll take care of things, don't you worry your little IP engineer
> brain how things are transported long distance".
>
> I believe this is still the case at a lot of ISPs. Not all, hopefully not
> even most, but I'm sure there are some.
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se
>