nanog mailing list archives

Re: Are people still building SONET networks from scratch?


From: james jones <james () freedomnet co nz>
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2012 12:47:52 -0400

On the surface this makes me want to cry.  I could be missing something as
well.

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Will Orton <will () loopfree net> wrote:

We've run into an issue with a customer that has been confounding us for a
few
months as we try to design what they need.

The customer has a location in the relative middle of nowhere that they are
trying to build a protected OC3 to. Ultimately, their traffic on it will be
packet data (IP/ethernet, not channelized/voice). But they seem to be
absolutely 100% set on the idea that they build with Cisco ONS boxes and
that
they run and control the D1-D12 bytes in order to manage protection
switching
on the OC3 (and have their DCC channel for management).

Since this is the middle of nowhere, we are having to piece it together
from a
few runs of dark fiber here and there and lit services from about 3 other
providers to get from the desired point A to the desired point B. The
issues
we seem to be hitting are:

-We seem to be unable to find anyone who sells lit OC3 with D1-D12
transparency for the client. Sometimes we can get D1-D3, but that's it.

-lit OC3/12/48 is ridiculously expensive comapred to 1g ethernet waves or
10g
waves (choice LAN/WAN ethernet or OC192)

10g waves are cheap enough that we have entertained the idea of buying
them and
putting OC-192/muxponders on the ends to provide the OC-3, but even then
I'm
having trouble finding boxes that will do D1-D12 transparency for client
OC-3.
Building the whole thing on dark fiber so that we could specify the exact
equipment on every hop isn't going to happen, as the "protect" path is
about
1000 miles and the geography is such that we don't really have a market
for all
the other wasted capacity there would be on that path.

Having much more experience with ethernet/packet/MPLS setups, we are
trying to
get the client to admit that 1g/10g waves running ethernet with QoS would
be as
good as or better in terms of latency, jitter, and loss for their packet
data.
So far they will barely listen to the arguments. And then going the next
leap
and showing them that we could work towards <50ms protection switching with
MPLS/BFD/etc packet-based protocols is another stretch.


Am I missing something here that my customer isn't, or is it the other way
around?

-Will




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