Re: Diversity - was: Fiber cut in SF area

[Neil Harris <neil () tonal clara co uk>]

Rod Beck wrote:
> That service is probably very expensive.  
>
> There is no known way to provide cheap 10 wave protection. Not carrier grade. Protected 10 GigE service (LAN PHY 10 GigE) will tolerate a very high BER before switching. And the cost of switching STM64 is very high as well. 
>
> Bottom line is that it will cost more than two diversely routed 10 gig waves. 
>
> There is no real market for protected 10 gig waves. Occasionally a bank will request the service, but backoff as soon as they see the price tag. 
>
> "Hopefully none of these customers had service and protect ckts that went down... I would be pissed as a ceo if that happen 
> to my company.  Hopefully level3's new service offering is 100@percent redundant as stated
>
> The new service offerings include: - Protected Wavelengths: Level 3 now provides automatic protection-switching to a 
> dedicated diversely routed wavelength in the event of a network failure. The protection switch, fully automated and managed 
> by Level 3, happens at switching speeds approaching SONET restoration times. The single interface to the customer requires 
> no additional capital cost for customer optical ports, and the diverse restoration path is fixed and fully known to the 
> customer. These features allow customers to achieve fast restoration with predictable performance in their network without 
> adding significant cost and routing complexity. -"
>   

Surely a simple wideband optomechanical switch, actuated by detected 
signal degradation on a pilot wavelength or wavelengths, would do the 
job with high reliability and relatively low cost, without any extra 
need for switching the STM64 signal at the bitstream level?

-- Neil