RE: Utilization of the redundant ring in SONET

["Jeb R. Linton" <jeblinton () corp earthlink net>]

Actually, most of the largest holders of fiber in the U.S. have started to
offer unprotected SONET (and Lambda) service. Apparently, a few months ago
OC-48 and OC-192 speed Unprotected Wavelength services caught on like
wildfire, and customers started clamoring for lower speed Unprotected SONET
service.

I know of at least six of the biggest carriers here who offer it at OC-12,
and every one willing to guarantee a particular path - you just have to work
path diversity into your design. Some may even offer OC-3, though I haven't
checked that.

I can say that the price point on Unprotected SONET services is great - if
you're building redundancy into your physical topology anyway, you may not
need APS. The savings can be huge.

Likewise, I agree that there can be great cost savings for "Preemptable"
service, though I wouldn't use it for a mission-critical network. I only
know offhand of one major U.S. carrier who offers this, but I'm sure others
do, or will - it just makes sense. There are plenty of services that can
stand an occasional outage.

- Jeb

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen Turner
>
> <snip>
> What you can't buy is two unprotected diversely-routed
> circuits.  You can simulate that by purchasing a
> protected circuit with a single customer interface
> and an extra traffic channel.
>
> <snip>
> --
>  Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
>  (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
>  glen.turner () aarnet edu au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
> --
>  The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised