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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum

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To: ftth who started this subject	7/20/2001 12:50:02 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) of 46821

Today's focus: Metro Ethernet mesh balloon bursts at NFOEC By Jim Duffy Vendors advocating optical Ethernet and mesh topologies in the metropolitan area did not do themselves any favors at last week's National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference in Baltimore. Presenters in two Wednesday sessions - Optical Ethernet and Metro Networks - could not adequately field and answer tame questions from attendees. They stammered, danced around and offered vague, content-free replies to questions like: * How and why would a service provider migrate from a revenue- generating ring to a mesh? * How does protection and restoration, which is understood in rings, work in a mesh? * What are the cost and service benefits of a Gigabit Ethernet PON over cable and DSL, or even plain old telephone service? On this topic specifically, a vendor was hard-pressed to demonstrate how a Gigabit Ethernet PON offered any new service beyond the $100 to $200 people pay monthly right now - including yours truly - for local phone, cable and broadband Internet access. Also, a vendor proposing a hybrid Ethernet/SONET implementation over a "Gigabit Packet Ring" - ostensibly a pre-standard of the emerging IEEE 802.17 Resilient Packet Ring standard - failed to provide specific economics of this approach vs. SONET running data or Ethernet performing circuit emulation. The vendor merely offered "expectations" that there's a "cost penalty" in adapting TDM to packet and vice versa. It seems the metropolitan optical Ethernet/mesh proponents did more to convince service providers to retain their SONET rings than they did to urge a migration to packet-optimized architectures. They not only did service providers a disservice by not doing their homework; but they also did their companies a disservice by possibly delaying or even eliminating a potential revenue stream. Renowned industry consultant Tom Nolle says companies building their business on Ethernet eventually becoming the service provisioning infrastructure for the metropolitan-area network will be dead in six months. With last week's NFOEC debacle, it may be sooner. _______________________________________________________________ To contact Jim Duffy: Jim Duffy is managing editor of The Edge, Network World's service provider equipment print section and Web channel. He has 15 years of high-tech reporting experience, including 10 years at Network World. Previously, he was senior editor at Computer Systems News and associate editor/reporter at Electronic News and MIS Week. He can be reached at mailto:jduffy@nww.com.

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