On Mon, 20 Jun 2016, Mark Tinka wrote:
Many of us will remember the days of IPoDWDM. That flopped.
Errrr, it didn't flop at all. I know lots of operators that do this.
For networks that lease all of their transport, not sure how this will help as transport providers will not open their networks up to 3rd party IP networks.
Yeah, that's harder. Doing pure photonic transport is operationally difficult without management integration between optic transport provider and customer. That part hasn't happened.
It's two different expenses. If routers made good DWDM switches, this would not be much of a problem, but they don't. So you need to two teams managing two different sets of kit and opex, which is what the industry has been trying to solve for some time now. How do we collapse both of these cost centres into one manageable expense, considering that the primary reason transport networks exist and expand today is to carry IP traffic?
I know operators who have collapsed their "core transport group" to handle Fiber+DWDM+SDH+IP (design/planning/3rd line operations). I know others where the IP and optical teams work very closely together and plan the network together.
If your main business is transporting IP/MPLS then this is obvious that you need to have the teams work closely together. If your main business is to L2 switch or bit transport lots of TDM/L2 traffic, then it's less obvious.
-- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swm...@swm.pp.se
