From post 9018 you wrote:
>>SONET telecom gear costs two to ten times as much as DWDM<<
but from your last post, you added an important qualifier..
>>SONET (Synchronous Optical Networking) gear costs two to ten times as much as DWDM for equivalent capacity, and it also requires optical fiber.<<
I think the "equivalent capacity" part is good to note, as the Chromatis white paper makes the point that when there are various sites on a metro ring that only need the lower capacity adequately provided by SONET (and already in place,) they still must upgrade to more expensive equipment to handle the higher capacity metro DWDM systems traditionally installed. With the Chromatis product/system, while the fiber stays the same, only those sites that have higher bandwidth demand will have to upgrade with new DWDM equipment, while the sites not seeing increasing demand need not incur that cost.
>>I fail to see how Chromatis' strategy of using a different wavelength would extend the life of SONET gear.<<
Just thinking out loud here, but I think your differences with what Chromatis has stated in its white paper comes from different assumptions on demand. It looks as though the appeal of the Chromatis product comes from the assumption that some of the present sites already using SONET will not see a dramatic increase of bandwidth demand that would force them to either increase the expensive SONET gear (not sure if that is possible, but I am just saying that for purposes of the 2-10 times comment you made) or pay for some new DWDM equipment. Your assumption may be that all sites may experience a dramatic increase in bandwidth demand (my view also, but I am setting it aside here just to understand both viewpoints..<g>) As for the different wavelength technology making this feasible, that is out of my depth of understanding right now and perhaps that issue is the one we need to address...
>>Now, if you were building out a new network, which would you choose? <<
Again, I think the Chromatis product is for an existing metro system in place with SONET gear and not a totally new system being built...(I could be wrong, and welcome any corrections on this...)
PS I am no apologist for Chromatis, just trying to understand this new space. And since my understanding of their product comes only from that Lightreading article, it could be faulty....
lightreading.com
>>"Dark Fiber" is installed, but unused fiber. It is called dark because there are no modulated laser light signals passing through it. How can it possibly be cheaper than anything? By definition, it is infinitely expensive. Division by zero equals infinity.<<
I don't quite understand this statement. I thought dark fiber was cheaper than fiber being used as there are no costs associated with lighting it up...no boxes on either end, no upkeep, no nothing, just the one time installation cost... |
