[102814] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Qwest desires mesh to reduce unused standby capacity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Abley)
Thu Feb 28 08:53:17 2008
Cc: frnkblk@iname.com, nanog@merit.edu
From: Joe Abley <jabley@ca.afilias.info>
To: "Paul Wall" <pauldotwall@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <620fd17c0802272256t1e3d6c4bhac2af94a72e07b9a@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:39:45 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On 28-Feb-2008, at 01:56, Paul Wall wrote:
> UU/MFS tried running IP on the 'protect' path of their SONET rings
> 10 years ago. It didn't work then.
Well, it works so long as whoever was trying to troubleshoot the
circuits at 3am on US Thanksgiving understands that having the system
"switch to protect" is quite bad, in the sense that it causes both
sides to go down at once (I seem to remember there was a protect paths
built for each side of the original ring using a loopback).
Other than the unfamiliarity with the concept demonstrated by phone
companies, I didn't notice any great fundamental problem with the
idea. The extra 10G of capacity across the Atlantic was arguably more
useful in the grand scheme of things than the being able to recover
from a single-point failure at SONET speeds. It's probably fair to say
there's more real-time traffic on the network today than there was
then, however.
I have never worked for UU/MFS, lest anybody draw that conclusion.
Joe
