Re: Routed optical networks

[Etienne-Victor Depasquale via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

> On Mon, May 01, 2023 at 02:56:47PM -0600, Matt Erculiani wrote:
> > In short, the idea is that optical networks are wasteful and routers do a
> > better job making more use of a network's capacity than ROADMs. Take the
> > extra router hop (or 3 or 8) versus short-cutting it with an optical
> > network because the silicon is so low-latency anyway that it hardly
> makes a
> > difference now. Putting more GBs per second on fewer strands means
> saving a
> > lot of money on infrastructure costs.
>
> This is a very convoluted way of backing into the ole packet-switched
> vs. circuit switched decision.

I don't follow.
While ROADMs can be thought of as circuit-switchers,
the number of concurrent clients and switching latency put ROADMs on a
different operational level than packet switchers, right?

Cheers,

Etienne

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 4:29 PM Izaac <izaac () setec org> wrote:

> On Mon, May 01, 2023 at 02:56:47PM -0600, Matt Erculiani wrote:
> > In short, the idea is that optical networks are wasteful and routers do a
> > better job making more use of a network's capacity than ROADMs. Take the
> > extra router hop (or 3 or 8) versus short-cutting it with an optical
> > network because the silicon is so low-latency anyway that it hardly
> makes a
> > difference now. Putting more GBs per second on fewer strands means
> saving a
> > lot of money on infrastructure costs.
>
> This is a very convoluted way of backing into the ole packet-switched
> vs. circuit switched decision.
>
> --
> . ___ ___  .   .  ___
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> .  _\_ /__ |-\ |-\ \__


-- 
Ing. Etienne-Victor Depasquale
Assistant Lecturer
Department of Communications & Computer Engineering
Faculty of Information & Communication Technology
University of Malta
Web. https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/etiennedepasquale