Are people still building SONET networks from scratch?

[will at loopfree.net (Will Orton)]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2012 at 06:00:37PM +0100, Nick Hilliard wrote:
> Not sure if I see the problem here.  Show them the bill for an OC3 service,
> and then show them the bill for the equivalent ethernet service.  This
> usually works for me.  If they want to pay for OC3 when there's no
> compelling reason to, who are you to argue?
> 
> Nick
> 


Yes, of course the response is, "figure out how to make the OC3 cheaper". :) 
So we're rapidly approaching a response of "you've engineered yourself into 
a corner, take it or leave it".

I just can't see how to get OC3 D1-D12 tunneled through without doing it as 
a mix of OC-48 and dark fiber for the entire path and specifying lots of 
complicated boxes just to get those bytes through. That cost is an order of 
magnitude more than just buying OC3 from multiple carriers (who can't tunnel 
D1-D12), which is a magnitude more than buying mpls-based gig-e or gig-e 
wave.

I wasn't around (well, I was just a T1/DS3 customer) when all the OC3/12/48 
SONET networks were built 10-15 years ago. I suppose they were all built 
directly on the fiber (maybe with WDM but no layer1.5-2 muxing) and the 
provider was always the one who handled protection switching?

I've considered using J's PE-4CHOC3-CE-SFP (OC3 emulated SAToP), then I 
could do it all with gig-e underneath. Does anyone make a cheaper OC3 
circuit emulation module or box? Most likely the customer wouldn't believe 
such a thing is possible and we'd have to put something in the contract 
allowing them SLA credit if their OC3 suffers too many timing slips or 
something.


-Will