IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings - Wired

Virtualization – Part 2 - The Abstraction of the Computer

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:16:06 +0000

Here's the second part of our Virtualization series and a continuation of Virtualization - Part 1 – The Abstraction of the Internet.

A computer consists of several key elements that along with software (and firmware) provide useful applications like the browser you are using to read this blog from our web servers.

Here are some of the items that are noteworthy:

Central Processing Unit (CPU) – aka Pentium for you wintel folks, is the heart of the computer and executes instructions (software or firmware) that are programmed by a software engineer.

Input/Output Devices – Provides a method to enter , display or share information from the computer, for example: Display, keyboard, mouse.

Random Access Memory (RAM) – Is memory that is accessed by the CPU which losses its contents when you remove power. RAM (Typically) is the fastest memory that a CPU and “read” or “write”.

Disk Drive – Is memory that is also accessed by the CPU which doesn’t lose its contents when you remove power. Disks are slower than RAM.

Flash Memory – Is like RAM but has the characteristics of a disk drive.

Data Bus – Depending on the CPU (8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit or 64 bits wide) is where the CPU can read or write data from or to the various memory devices, Input/Output devices. Each bit is a “1” or “0”.

Address Bus – Also dependent on the CPU , this is where the CPU (using bits) selects the location in memory to read or write data.

Firmware – aka BIOS for wintel folks, is software that is used to “boot” (restart from a known state) the computer that resides in Flash memory or a Programmable Read Only Memory (PROM).

Software – eg Office.

Operating System – eg Windows, is a layer of software that abstracts the hardware and controls the overall operation of the computer.

Networks – Are communication systems that allow computers to share information.

Programming Languages – A CPU can only understand binary (“1” or “0” s) for the instructions it executes. There are various instructions to read , write, add, multiply, subtract , divide and move data. However, Humans need to abstract the instructions into words to make it easier. These languages define the way words are used forming a grammer (just like English or Spanish) . The first form of languages are assembler languages which are specific to a CPU and not portable, the subsequent languages like C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal provided more functionality with Database languages like 3GL, 4GL etc..

A computer can be a main frame, a desktop or your laptop which were confined to a area (room, your desk or your lap).

Advances in networking have provided efficient methods of distributing the CPU from Disks, Input/Output devices.

Storage Area Networks are clusters of disk drives that are no longer directly connected to the computer using the various buss’s described above. This is a key level of abstraction which has allowed distributed computing to evolve into GRID computing where the software is one place, the CPUs in another and memory in yet another. Distributed computing provides more efficient use of computing at unparalleled level of disaster recovery.

Why is this important?

Computing has and will continue to be the mother of invention for advances not only in the hardware or software but also in the networks that connect everything together like the Internet or also an Enterprise VPN.

More later :

Virtualization – Part 3 - The Abstraction of Applications
Concepts of a Application Programmers Interface (API), examples and pitfalls for APIs and the abstraction of Web Services.

Virtualization- Part 1 - The Abstraction of the Internet

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:00:45 +0000

A key element of virtualization is the concept of abstraction. Abstraction can take many forms and many applications with profound benefits.

This is the first of a five part series on the evolution of virtualization, with the following planned articles:

Virtualization – Part 2 - The Abstraction of the Computer
The definition of a computer (CPU, data bus, memory, input/output, and disk) , the abstraction of programming a computer (machine code, assembly language, 3rd generation programming languages (3GL), 4GL and 5GL), the separation of a CPU from disk and the application of a Storage Area Network (SAN), blade servers and the realization of GRID computing.

Virtualization – Part 3 - The Abstraction of Applications
Concepts of a Application Programmers Interface (API), examples and pitfalls for APIs and the abstraction of Web Services.

Virtualization – Part 4 – Virtualization of Voice Communications
Telephony basics in the circuit switched voice network and the evolution of the packet switched voice network , aka VoIP.

Virtualization – Part 5 - Real World IT Examples and Benefits
The anatomy and benefits of Virtual Data Centers and Call Centers

We’ll start the series on a model that is near and dear to our hearts – the Internet.

Vint Cerf is one of the founding fathers of the internet and created a transport model of moving packets from one network to another. Seems pretty straight forward but, back in the day this was not an easy task as the networks were typically homogenous deployed by a single hardware vendor (DEC, AT&T, NCR, Apollo, Banyan, etc… ). Each vendor had their own proprietary methods of defining a ‘packet’ (that is,   the number of bits in a ‘packet’; the order of the bits in a ‘packet’; the number of bytes in a ‘packet’; and the meaning of each bit/byte in a ‘packet’), and the way these computers spoke to each other (i.e. the protocol).

The first major challenge was to allow these desperate networks to exchange data. The challenge was met by defining common communication protocols (i.e. TCP/IP, UCP, etc …) , and   a common packet & addressing structure.

This allowed high powered users (Scientists at the world's research institutions) to efficiently communicate across an environment largely made up of heterogeneous computers. Within this structure, application developers at each vendor (DEC, AT&T, NCR, Apollo, Banyan, etc…) developed tools, using the agreed upon common protocols , to transfer files (FTP), login into another computer (TELNET) and exchange email (POP3, SMTP).

Tim Bernes-Lee was one of those high powered users and wanted to find an easier way of navigating thru the internet without having to issue ftp commands or walk thru folders ( i.e. directories). He created an abstraction between what the internet looked like and the commands that facilitated communications . Tim created the notion of the world wide web. The world’s first web site was brought online in 1991.

Tim is credited for creating the following words we all use everyday: www, http and HyperText Transfer Protocol.

These abstractions have lead to an unprecedented number of users to the internet in very little time.   A concept that some call, “Internet Time” .

“Internet Time” is defined by Wikipedia   as:

“Internet time was a common catchphrase that originated during the late-1990s Internet boom. In this period, people who worked with the Internet had come to believe that "everything moved faster on the 'net", because the Internet made the dissemination of information far easier and cheaper. Fast-moving developments were therefore said to run "on Internet time".

Efforts in virtualization of the internet are focused in/around layer 3 of the OSI stack, in the next article in this series we will take a dive into the machines themselves to understand abstraction as it relates to their operation and subsequent evolution, in Part 2 - The Abstraction of the Computer.

We’ll then take a quick look at the applications that ride over them in Part 3 – The Abstraction of Applications.

After understanding the abstraction of the Application, we’ll look at a very basis of communications – Voice , in Part 4 - Virtualization of Voice Communications.

In the final article we will put all of these pieces together in understanding the anatomy and benefits of Virtual Data Centers and Call Centers , in Part 5 - Real World IT Examples and Benefits.

Strowger Stepper - Rochester's part in telephony history.

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 18:57:01 +0000

For those of you that don’t know, there’s a fairly large contingency of Global Crossing folks that live and work in Rochester, NY. (Myself being one) The reason behind that, is Global Crossing’s purchase of Frontier Communications in 1999. Frontier Communications’ roots was Rochester Telephone. Rochester has a lively and, within telecom circles, strong telecom heritage. What a lot of people don’t know is that circuit switching telephone technologies and Rochester, NY have much more in common than meets the eye. Enter Almon Brown Strowger

According to wikipedia:
Almon Brown Strowger, Penfield native invented the automatic telephone switch. He was born in Penfield, near Rochester, New York..
“The story has it that Strowger, who according to historians was described as "eccentric, irascible and even mad," was motivated to invent an automatic telephone exchange after having difficulties with the local telephone operators. He was said to be convinced that the local manual telephone exchange operators were sending calls to his competitor rather than his business. He also suspected that the telephone operators were influencing the choice of undertaker when his business was requested. The origin of this suspicion reportedly arose from an incident in Topeka when a friend died and the family contacted a rival undertaker. Other stories claim that the wife or, possibly, the cousin of a competing undertaker was a telephone operator and Strowger suspected that the operators were telling callers that his line was busy or connecting his callers to the competition. Yet another story has him boasting of inventing "the girl-less, cuss-less telephone." No reliable details survive to substantiate these claims. Hence on, after inventing his switch, he said "No longer will my competitor steal all my business just because his wife is a Bell operator.”
Adam “voiploser” Uzelac

IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:23:49 +0000

NEWS FLASH: Virtual Reality not as good as Reality

We've all been there. Travel expenses have to be cut, and yet your work centers are geographically separated, work groups are forged from different work centers, and your management suggests you increase your use of video conferencing. You grudgingly submit to the idea but hope that you still have enough money to do the necessary amount of travel, and you might even try some video conferencing. But will it work?

Corporations have learned a lot since this 2004 Norwegian study that indicated that video conferencing affected corporate travel from 2.5-3.5%. Part of the following study suggests that it's merely a matter of implementing the right culture with the right technology and you can start saving, but what might the long term impacts be of reducing personal interaction amongst employees.

David Siegel

Director IP Product Management

biography

April 16th Boston

My day started with a 7am flight, followed by a soon to be customer visit, I then presented a
IPv6 state-of-the-union perspective at a Futurenet panel discussion along with John Curran Chairman of ARRIN, and Todd Underwood of NANOG. And ended the day with the Massnetcomms 2008 award dinner.

The highlight of my day was at the award dinner, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Vanu Bose (he is the son of the founder of Bose) who was honored with the most innovative product of the year. Vanu has developed a software controlled radio that can operate across many deployed mobile standards . Instead of fork lifting hardware, you change the software and mobile operators can efficiently rollout new wireless protocols. Kinda like adding a new application on your PC.

Onofrio (Norm) Schillaci

Principal Solutions Architect

biography

IVR Hell Solved

I think everyone has at least one horror story about navigating through an Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) menu over the phone. You know what I am referring to...those “Press one for this, press two for that”. One example of the miserable part about these systems is when you have to listen through the entire thing only to find out that the option you need isn’t an option at all –OR- when someone (usually my kids) talks to you during the recording and you miss some options (most likely the one that you needed!), so you have to listen to the entire announcement again. This, my friends, is IVR hell. Well I just stumbled upon a company that is addressing IVR hell head on, and with a whole bunch of ingenuity mind you…

Adam Uzelac

Director and Principal Network Architect - Converged Architecture

biography

Harvard visit

Monday I had the pleasure of re-connecting with a former professor of mine, Nolan Bowie. He was gracious enough to allow me to guest lecture his class which focuses on the future of communications media and the intersection with public policy. I was honored to be asked to share my experiences and insights with such a diverse and eclectic group of truly gifted students.

It was extremely refreshing to engage with Professor Bowie whose ideas are both provocative and conventional at the same time. His ideas are provocative because they challenge the established interests in fundamental ways. But his ideas are conventional because they simply take established policy in one area and apply it in another. For example, just putting the label “national security” on something can dramatically change the way people address a concern. If economic competitiveness is a matter of national security and broadband deployment is a critical component of economic competitiveness, then massive government investment in broadband infrastructure doesn’t seem all that radical, and in fact seems down right conventional.

Paul Kouroupas

Vice President Regulatory Affairs

biography

The Value of Presence ? That is the question.

While visiting with several individuals a few weeks ago at the Ziff Davis Unified Communications Summit in Seattle, WA I noticed that some people hadn't yet realized the power of one aspect to the overall value of unified communications which relates to presence awareness. That is leveraging presence not just in instant messaging but in other communication vehicles can play an important role in transforming your business impact as an IT organization. As a result I thought I would dedicate this post to help create ideas around things that can be done to assist in helping IT in leading the way.

Here at Global Crossing in an attempt to leverage this core components of Unified Communications in an ongoing effort to incorporate the advantages of collaborative, converged services within our enterprise we've transformed internal applications from static non presence aware to anticipatory engaged communication tools that are supporting contextual collaboration with presence-awareness throughout the enterprise. In this instance presence-awareness (whether someone is available in simple terms and how to contact) is utilizing capabilities including chat, computer-based telephony, conferencing, IP video, and e-mail across tools that leveraged across the enterprise drive in principle more efficacy from consumption and corresponding execution. In fact it is my opinion that since presence has been embedded into our application infrastructure to enhance our collaborative capabilities it is natural to see transformational improvements occur around our "quality of experience" associated to the overall user experience. This is so because enabling enhanced customer experience truly enables the IT organization to drive one more component to our IT organizations transformational success in enabling the business to not only "react" but be proactive by achieving extensibility required within the distribution transparency model required for execution. Said another way the fact that presence awareness has been integrated into our application infrastructure means this action will further enhance our agility to enhance operational efficiency by allowing application "pivots" to be present thus accelerating communication by eliminating in some instances serial cognitive task execution.

Thomas Hobika

VP, Sales Engineering, EST

biography

Universal VoIP Peering Faces a Known Road

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:05:09 +0000

I read an interesting article tonite entitled “Universal VoIP Peering Faces a Rough Road “

VoIP peering is not a flip of the switch. Look back at history as to how the PSTN was built – over time and by market forces.

Bell’s initial success was in local operations, and over time these local operation islands were connected as part of “ATT long lines”. In the US , Bell didn’t have a lock on all local operating markets, there were numerous independents: GTE, United, SNET, Rochester Telephone, etc.... The success of the early PSTN required an ability to terminate calls outside of a LEC footprint, and even required diplomatic functions for international termination.

The move behind VoIP peering is a uni-lateral move by all providers to be free of PSTN regulations, tariffs and government. The benefit for providers is lower cost and competitive freedoms; the benefit to consumers is greater options.

Let’s look at a more recent example of technology based islands, ISDN. ISDN early promises of adoption were plagued by a lack of national (and international) standards, both ATT (now Lucent) and Northern Telecom (now Nortel Networks) had competing technology implementations, both fought within the standard bodies to have a lock on the accepted standard that bonded LEC ISDN islands. And in the US National ISDN2 became the standard bodies that provided a pathway to ISDN connectivity, add ETSI and the ITU international interoperability became a reality.

It took a fragmented ISDN standard to become a ubiquitous service almost 10 years.

VoIP, SIP, IP are interoperable today and had become a pathway for VoIP peering.

The road to VoIP peering is not a rough road but a known road. The early pioneers who provide that vehicle will be part of the new VoIP based “long lines”.

FMC Test Findings - Lifting the Hood on an FMC-IMS Trial

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:18:12 +0000

Previously I made a post on the elements of trial and evaluating next gen platforms and applications, such as IMS and Fixed Mobile Convergence. We have been trialing both for quite a few months now. And, while I'm not allowed to mention vendors or alot of the details, I can tell you that the lab testing produced many results which are not often, if at all disclosed by other network operators. Many carriers will only mention the fact that they have trialed these technologies, but never reveal the results, or mention the scope of the testing that they conduct. While it is important to preserve the clandestine nature of product planning so as not to reveal strategies to our fellow carrier competition, I think that the nature of blogging serves an optimal avenue to provide a format for open dialogue to improve industry communication. So, in the spirit of the blog, following are some of the high-level findings of our testing.

Testing Objectives

The lab trial was categorized as a Technical Proof of Concept (TPOC) to examine a limited subset of features which are executed to replicate and evaluate the customer experience of the technology and to scope the required integration effort of network interfaces in a number of service domains, across multiple vendor equipment. The trial environment utilized a number of elements to provide a complete network and service environment which follow:

IMS Core - CSCF, ENUM, HSS, BGCF
VoIP Core for PSTN Breakout - Softswitch, VoIP Gateway, SS7 Gateway
Session Border Controller - Border gateway functions
Hosted Telephony - Provide network-centric IP PBX functions such as extension dialing, etc.
IP PBX - Provide FMC interface to enterprise-hosted IP PBX functions
FMC Application - Otherwise known as the VCC Application in 3GPP
WiFi AP - Providing the WLAN environment
Dual Mode Phone - A Windows Mobile phone with integrated WiFi and GSM radios

There were a number of tests performed, which spanned technical interoperability, application usability, and basic functions such as call completion in multiple access networks, origination and termination, etc...

Through testing we observed a number of things

Fixed Mobile Convergence is real - The perception of “vaporware” no longer holds true of converged applications integrating both fixed and mobile access networks. These services primarily comprise a voice element which allows the user to transition calls between different phone types (desk or mobile), or different access networks (IP, PSTN or Cellular), extend PBX features to the mobile domain or even merge the identity of the desk phone and the mobile phone. These features work, and have the potential to provide unique productvity and cost advantages to Enterprise users.

True IMS value is difficult to capture in limited trials – The Proof of Concept used IMS to provide session control, and invoke applications in the trial. This proved useful when combining a hosted telephony application with the Fixed Mobile Convergence application, because it is a relatively straightforward process to configure IMS to control when to invoke each application, and in what order to provide a complete service. There are a number of other benefits associated with the IMS architecture which were not evaluated in the trial. These include such things as consolidated billing, subscriber management, and interface standardization which in principle facilitates application integration.

Interoperability is still an issue – During the integration of the IMS system and the core VoIP system a number of SIP interoperability problems were identified. While IMS seeks to define standardized interfaces between network elements it was found that many interoperability problems lie deep in the SIP protocol, beyond where the standards are defined.

IMS was found to be highly complex – Implementing services over an IMS architecture creates complex call flows. This is widely known in the industry. A number of transactions are involved in order for even basic calls to complete. Add in 2 or more applications, which have a B2BUA function and this gets to be messy from an operational perspective. The IMS core implements a number of SIP elements that are involved in the call as it is processed in the network. As a result, supporting these call flows becomes difficult, particularly if there are problems. Some of the call flows took up to 12 hops before call completion in the IP domain.

FMC feature integration with enterprise PBX is a non-trivial process – It was found that configuring FMC functionality interfacing with an IP PBX (ie: handing off mobile calls to IP phones, using single voicemail, sim ring etc.) is not trivial. It took weeks to enable FMC features with our in-house IP PBX. There are a number of configuration steps required to enable these features, clear documentation and step by step instructions are critical to support a commercial implementation.

Phone battery life suffers in WiFi mode – With WiFi enabled and used consistently, we experienced battery life of approximately 4 hours. For most users this will be unacceptable. Implemention of power saving modes in the WiFi settings will help battery life in a normal user operating environment, however, the phone battery life using WiFi will not approach existing call times experienced in today’s phones for a number of years.

Once configured, features are stable and function consistently – Once the configurations were stabilized, the features were found to work consistently and reliably.

There are several conclusions that can be drawn from this experience. Yes, it is here, and yes it works. The primary issue that many carriers are struggling with right now comes down to quality of experience (ie: the device ready for prime time?), and the complexity associated with managing and supporting a complex mixture of wireless and wireline technologies for end users.

The applications may be ready for the network, but the more relevant question here may be....is the network ready for the application?

Advanced Solutions are an Art (Part 2)

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:07:18 +0000

I’d like to expand on my thought process from my last blog on Advanced Solutions are an Art (Part 1).

When I closed the blog , and I quote:
“Advanced solutions are an art, anyone can propose a solution, not everyone can deliver one that meets customer needs while still being economically feasible.”

I wanted to continue the discussion and start a dialogue as to what a service provider actually provides on a day to day basis?

A service provider provides a service, a service is defined by the technologies, the processes, the systems and most of all the people within the service providers environment.

All of these define something I like to call the “Service Layer”.

A service layer in this context addresses 4 key capabilities within a service provider:
- Sales
- Service Delivery
- Maintenance
- Billing

Lets take a moment to peel the onion on each of the capabilities:
- Sales includes the following functions: sales engineering, account management, customer support, pricing, marketing, proposal development that all lead to an order.

- Service Delivery in the process of orchestrating the delivery of individual components that together provide a complex service, the capability is completed when the customer accepts the service and the service provider can start billing.

- Maintenance is by far the most important capability, like I said, anyone can sell a service, anyone can delivery a service, not everyone can support the service when a customer calls at 3am!

- Billing from a providers perspective is the really important, after all providers are meant to provide a return on investment, and just as important to enterprises as provider costs are typically a cost center and accuracy and support are key.

Maintenance is so important, we’ll do a deep dive in Part 3.

Advanced Solutions are an Art (Part 1)

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:28:57 +0000

I have always felt that Software engineering is an art. Anyone can write some code, but not everyone can develop a system that is flexible and maintainable .

Flexibility is important, as requirements tend to change and grow with use of a system and subsequent learning.

Maintenance is even more important in that you need have a cost effective way of achieving Flexibility , and not throwing parts of the system away and building upon proven parts of the system.

That is the art of Software on a hardware platform, and together they solve a problem and form a complex system onto itself. Expand this thinking into the definition of a Service Provider.

A service provider is a collection of complex systems - switches, routers, service provisioning , trouble ticketing, monitoring , billing as well as the people and centers that complete the service layer.

Service providers - like software engineering is an art - anyone can deploy a switch, anyone can expedite an order on the new switch. Not everyone can operationalize an offer that is both flexible and maintainable.

Flexibility is important as customer always want more and equipment vendors always deliver more features.

Maintenance is really important when it comes to a service fault that occurs at 3am during a long weekend.

A service is not something you can touch, it's the experience and customer satisfaction is its metric.

Advanced solutions are an art, anyone can propose a solution, not everyone can deliver one that meets customer needs while still being economically feasible.

Device convergence continues to evolve …

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:14:19 +0000

Look closely and you’ll find innovation that has synthesized 2 disparate input devices.

A mouse + phone = Skype mouse phone.

What’s next , adding an mp3 player?

Recent coverage of annoucement of Global Crossing and FiberNet

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:59:41 +0000

It’s interesting to see how old news is interleaved with new news in an industry that is faced with change such as ours.

An example of this is Om Malik’s interpretation and positioning of recent Global Crossing news and the meaning and comparison to other industry player's actions.

I am a firm believer that you need to understand history to understand possible outcomes, this is no different than driving in that you need to have a rear view mirror to understand where you have been (aka history) and a windshield to understand where you are going (aka possible outcomes).

But given that the current state of our industry is that it is in a state of consolidation, looking at the past has no meaning in predicting the future.

We are dealing with footsteps in the snow, each player will create their own unique tracks to survive and to cast an understanding of one player’s action to another has no meaning , unless you provide a detailed analysis of each player’s tracks as they relate to a common end point.

Time just flys by ...

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 01:21:24 +0000

I was so busy completing tasks that I couldn't finish this week's articles before leaving for Nova Scotia.

I'll be away on Holiday with new material starting the week of July 31st.

We'll be discussing 2 very cool topics:
1. Storage using IP as a transport, business applications and the need for application awareness within your network infrastructure.

2. Practical IPv6 features.

Looking forward to a 6 day adventure Biking the Seaside and Lighthouses In Nova Scotia .

Good break from this heat wave with temperatures at a comfortable 72F.

Be safe!!

Ethernet in the Enterprise

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:37:16 +0000

If you are a regular reader of my blog you may recall one of my earlier stories Ethernet - What's the big deal?.

I'll be speaking at the Carrier Ethernet Summit in San Diego on June 29th on a panel titled "Ethernet Supporting Enterprise Services" which will be touching on these points:

Enterprise applications and challenges driving demand
Supporting convergence of voice, data and video
Metro Ethernet versus inter-metro Ethernet WANs
Pros and cons of layer 3 VPNs versus Ethernet-based VPNs
Scalability, global coverage and VPLS
End-to-end SLAs

I decided to check out who my co-panelists would be and found this Ethernet Whitepaper from Telcove, a network operator on the east coast. I would love to be able to recommend this white paper, but unfortunately it contains many fallacies in addition to attributing some things to Ethernet that it doesn't deserve. It makes a number of very compelling sounding points that I will refute here.

1) Ethernet is the most efficient and flexible transport technology for VoIP, VPN, remote storage, audio and video teleconferencing and multimedia content sharing.

Really! So all I need is an ethernet connection and I'll have access to VoIP, VPNs, remote storage, audio conferencing and more? Let me plug in my Mac II with my ethernet card. Does your VoIP service work over Ethertalk? IP is the efficient and flexible protocol that makes VoIP, VPN's, and the other applications mentioned work so efficiently and flexibly. IP is so flexible, in fact, that it works with Ethernet as well as many other mediums such as SONET, SDH, Dialup/PPP, Satellite, Packet Radio, Token Ring, FDDI, RPR, ATM, Frame Relay, you get the idea.

2) Ethernet benefits the service provider by enabling service upgrades to be done remotely without requiring a truck roll or additional equipment at the central office or customer location.

Maybe, maybe not. If you have a device at the customer premise, say a managed router, and you want to add a feature, you may need to do a truck roll to upgrade software on the router. Chances are, even if it's not a router there is some sort of premise-based aspect to the service and it may require a field upgrade from time to time. The real benefit is that if most of the intelligence is provided in the providers network, as would be the case with MPLS-based IP-VPNs, it is easier for the carrier to release new features because they do not have to develop them for both their IP-VPN offer as well as their Managed Solutions offer.

3) Ethernet growth in the WAN and MAN is driven by distributed workforces and supply chains and supporting technology-based processes such as CRM, ERP, and SFA.

The applications mentioned can absolutely be held responsible for driving demand for data services in the WAN and MAN. Ethernet growth is driven by data growth, and therefore Ethernet is driven by those applications? I think that Ethernet growth in the WAN and MAN must be driven by other factors besides only MAN/WAN purchasing unless that growth is in fact tracking at the same rate of growth.

4) [Ethernet interfaces are cheaper, therefore] Enterprises can take advantage of commodity pricing for router interfaces as well as more elegantly connect to the WAN, that is, without the need for complex protocol translation or interworking functions.

Yes, Ethernet interfaces are cheaper than SONET/SDH interfaces, much cheaper. But routers are routers, and "complex protocol translation and interworking functions" are what routers do. It's just as much work for a router to decapsulate an IP packet from an Ethernet Frame and put it back into an Ethernet Frame as it is to put it in some other kind of frame, whether that's Packet over SONET (POS), PPP, or HDLC. The only thing simpler is if you substitute a switch for the router, but this may not be possible in some designs. You may need that router in order to terminate VLANs, where each VLAN goes off to a different location.

As for elegantly connecting to the WAN, elegance doesn't usually require protocol extensions. A new protocol extension called WAN-Phy gives ethernet some critical things that SONET has like error checking and correction. Such capabilities are necessary to enable the detection of problems in the long-haul circuit, such as timing-slips or dirty connectors and are crucial to troubleshooting performance problems. Not all hardware vendors support WAN-Phy yet, so make sure your carrier can do this for you if your equipment supports it.

5) Because of VoIP, Ethernet has emerged as the technology of choice for converging multiple service-specific networks onto a single, packet-based infrastructure equally capable of supporting traditional data applications as well as business-critical communications such as voice, thus, enabling tremendous operations cost-savings.

Compared to the POTS line or the ISDN line, Ethernet is winning. But VoIP did not and does not require Ethernet for a converged network, it will run over anything that runs IP...probably why they decided to call it Voice over IP instead of Voice over Ethernet. The runner up for Ethernet is probably Token ring, and although I haven't tried it, I'm sure VoIP works on it just fine. Token ring and other competitors like LANtastic got beat by Ethernet primarily due to speed. When Ethernet hit 100Mbps, the writing was on the wall. Once Ethernet won the LAN battle, then it got cheap. When it got fast and it was ubiquitous, it was the natural choice for business use.

6) Traditional WAN Transport services are available only in non-granular tiers, such as 1.5Mbps, 45Mbps, 155Mbps, 622Mbps etc. where as Ethernet is available not only in 10Mbps, 100Mbps, 1000Mbps but is also available in graduations of that such as 10Mbps, 20Mbps, 30Mbps, etc.

This is theoretically true, but you know what they say about theory and practice. In practice, it depends entirely upon the technology being used to deliver Ethernet. Some premise-based Ethernet solutions rely on traditional TDM for transport between the customer premise and the carrier, and as a result the limitations are present for the Ethernet solution as well. The customer port might be set for 100Mbps, but if a DS3 loop is used, the throughput may only go up to 45Mbps (or more likely less than 40Mbps accounting for overhead). The carrier may choose to offer full 100Mbps service using a 155Mbps local loop, or they may offer tiers with the service, eating the cost of the faster local loop hoping to make it back on the service offering or on future service upgrades. Global Crossing offers tiered service on virtually all port sizes, Ethernet or SONET. You can order a 300Mbps service on a 2.5Gbps local loop and increase it over time as your needs grow, so this granular tiering capability is a function of the providers service and billing model, not as a direct result of using Ethernet.

7) Ethernet promises to save the carrier operational expenses since a single network is cheaper to run than multiple service-specific networks (ATM, Frame Relay, TDM, IP).

A single network? Sure. Ethernet? Maybe combined with another technology that is media transport agnostic like IP, sure. We achieved a single converged core at Global Crossing using MPLS, which (unlike Ethernet) has traffic engineering capabilities in addition to working over Ethernet and non-Ethernet media, while carrying ethernet or just IP. Some of our competition is making their single core network an IP network, which also has traffic engineering capabilities although not as advanced as MPLS.

8) VPLS lets carriers offer consistent and more reliable service and SLA guarantees beyond the metropolitan-area boundary. VPLS will be very important for maintaining QoS through a multivendor infrastructure.

Are you guys talking about the same VPLS that I know of, Virtual Private LAN Service? The key thing that VPLS brings to the table that isn't covered via other methods of Ethernet service is the ability for the provider edge router to act as a smart bridge or switch in that it learns MAC Address's. This means that it figures out on it's own where every computer on the network lives and maps it to one it's port for that ethernet VPN. If they don't know which port the MAC address is on, they have to broadcast on all ports in order to find it.

You've got QoS capability if your equipment supports 802.1p (the p is for prioritization, the Ethernet version of IP's ToS bit for identifying traffic classes used for QoS), which you don't automatically get with VPLS. I'm not really sure why Telcove thinks that VPLS is the key to support QoS across multiple vendors when it seems to me that the vendors need to support the IEEE standard 802.1p not the IETF draft standard VPLS.

And lastly, SLA guarantees between the metro-area's are a business aspect backed up by mature long-haul transports like DWDM, SONET, or MPLS, which may or may not have Ethernet associated with them. VPLS, due to its complexity, may even make it harder for a carrier to back up an SLA.

Again, as I said before, if you want your global carrier to act as a big ethernet switch, VPLS is not likely to scale to large numbers of PC's. It was difficult for RFC1483 bridging Ethernet over Frame Relay, which is roughly equivalent to VPLS which is bridging Ethernet over MPLS (or other).

This will be the main point of my talk. Ethernet does have its place in the Carrier's transport portfolio, but it is far from the future of carrier networking.

What, outsourcing didn't work?

Fri, 26 May 2006 03:48:41 +0000

We hear all the time about what a great tool outsourcing is (particularly off shore) for reducing costs and increasing productivity, it's a splash of cold water on the face to read a story for which it failed miserably...and the fact that they're a competitor has nothing to do with it (I think). It could have happened just as easily to us.

Sprint spent $400Mil and move 1,000 of its employees to IBM to oursource its internal software development, and claims that rather than saving them money it cost them extra. In addition, they did not see the productivity enchancements that they were promised.

See the full article here.

If a carrier, or even enterprise for that matter, is looking to outsource part of its operation, it has to be very careful with the details around how it happens and how the benefits will be realized, or your outsourcing partner might just be laughing all the way to the bank.

Ethernet -- What's the big deal?

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:36:45 +0000

Don't get me wrong, Bob Metcalfe invented a good thing in Ethernet, but I wonder if people aren't just a little too in love with it. I've been a happy user of Ethernet ever since I first got into networking. I never really had to deal with token ring, although I did work with FDDI a bit in the early nineties. I even had the joy of working with 10base2 (thinnet) and 10base5 (anyone remember vampire tap transceivers?) when I was an assistant network manager at the UofA, which was a royal pain in the neck troubleshoot when it broke, and I'm very happy for everyone that 10baseT is now the standard for everyday ethernet use (100mbit and lower).

But I'm not talking about any of that. What I'm talking about is everyoine asking for their network service as ethernet. It's not a problem in and of itself, but what I have personally found (and would love to be validated in this, so please leave comments) is every customer that asks for it wants it for a different reason, and many of those reasons are false, based on misconstrued data and market propaganda.

When I ask customers why they want ethernet, here are some the answers I've heard (all of which stem from some sort of misconception):

I want you, my VPN provider, to have a demark at my premise
It's simpler, because it's layer 2
I can use cheaper hardware because I don't need routers any more
VPLS is a superior way to build VPN's

Part of the problem is that there are so many ways to utilize ethernet as part of a network design, but I emphasize that it is part of a network design, not usually the network design itself.

Let's take each of the misconceptions one at a time. Ethernet does not necessarily mean the provider has a demark at your premise. It depends on how it's delivered. Unless a customer specifies that they are looking for a managed service where we put a router at your prem and manage it for you, we'll assume that you want to get a quote for an ethernet local loop from your local provider, and we'll use that to deliver access to your location instead of a traditional T1/E1/DS3/OC-n local loop.

The next one is one of my favorites, because using a protocol designed for LANs and putting it in the WAN is anything but simple. Some of you IT managers probably still have to deal with those nasty things called broadcast storms because you've got too many PC's on your network trying to talk at the same time. The problem is solved by breaking the network up into multiple collision domains by adding routers. Now, imagine that your LAN now has as much as 200ms of latency between nodes, and imagine the effect of a broadcast storm. Disasterous! Don't plan on connecting your switches right to an all ethernet WAN, not only is it a recipe for disaster but with many implementations of ethernet VPNs it doesn't work because each path to each site is mapped into a different Virtual LAN (VLAN), and recombining these VLAN's into one LAN requires a router, even if you're using VPLS.

So, all that said, there are still good reasons to use ethernet. For one thing, the cost of a router interface is cheaper than that of a SONET interface on a per-meg basis, especially if you use one of those hybrid switch/routers like you'll find from vendors such as Foundry and Cisco (their 7600 OSR). Also, some local carriers to have an ethernet product that offers a better price/meg on Ethernet than for traditional pricing. Availability of such access can really help you stretch your IT budget dollar to provide more for your internal customers.

If this proves to be a topic of interest for our readers, I'll be sure and post many followup blogs on this subject.