Re: Point to Point Ethernet

["Ricky Beam" <jfbeam () gmail com>]

On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:33:10 -0400, Zartash Uzmi <zartash () gmail com> wrote:
> ... Can you say why
> precisely the cost of Ethernet is low compared to other viable  
> alternatives?

Volume.  Economies of scale.  Etc.

Ethernet is cheap because it's everywhere, and built into almost  
everything. (however, the likes of Cisco and Juniper still charge insane  
amounts for line cards, be they ethernet, T1, or OC48.) Given the choice  
of buying a $4k DS3 card or just plugging into an existing, builtin  
ethernet port, which do you think most people will choose?  And it doesn't  
take a multi-thousand dollar Router(tm) to deal with ethernet -- a 200$  
"trash" PC can handle routing (and NAT) for a great deal of traffic. (in  
many cases, *better* than the high priced kit.)

Case in point, our voice/data line from TW enters the building as fiber  
(along with about 4000 other circuits), crawls up the inside of the  
building as HDSL (single pair) to a box in my "closet" where 8 POTS line  
and an ethernet are handed to me.  The ethernet runs to a switch and then  
to the firewall.  If it wasn't handed to me as ethernet, I'd need a router  
to turn it into ethernet. (On the other wall... $8k worth of gear to turn  
a DS3 into ethernet.  Yes, the Optera Metro shelf at the other end of that  
DS3 could just as easily be an ethernet port -- but that would require TW  
and VZB to play nice with each other; it was enough of a pain to get the  
DS3 to work.  But that's miles off topic.)

--Ricky