IP and Optical domains?

[swmike at swm.pp.se (Mikael Abrahamsson)]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2016, Mark Tinka wrote:

> Many of us will remember the days of IPoDWDM. That flopped.

Errrr, it didn't flop at all. I know lots of operators that do this.

> For networks that lease all of their transport, not sure how this will 
> help as transport providers will not open their networks up to 3rd party 
> IP networks.

Yeah, that's harder. Doing pure photonic transport is operationally 
difficult without management integration between optic transport provider 
and customer. That part hasn't happened.

> It's two different expenses. If routers made good DWDM switches, this 
> would not be much of a problem, but they don't. So you need to two teams 
> managing two different sets of kit and opex, which is what the industry 
> has been trying to solve for some time now. How do we collapse both of 
> these cost centres into one manageable expense, considering that the 
> primary reason transport networks exist and expand today is to carry IP 
> traffic?

I know operators who have collapsed their "core transport group" to handle 
Fiber+DWDM+SDH+IP (design/planning/3rd line operations). I know others 
where the IP and optical teams work very closely together and plan the 
network together.

If your main business is transporting IP/MPLS then this is obvious that 
you need to have the teams work closely together. If your main business is 
to L2 switch or bit transport lots of TDM/L2 traffic, then it's less 
obvious.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se