Mike - this is a confusing area of technology and I may not be the best person to answer this question. To fully understand what is being said, an in depth knowledge of SONET and its framing structure are necessary. I think I may be a little behind on this, because the last time I checked, the only framing formats that were supported directly by SONET were the OC (optical carriers) family like OC-3, OC-48, etc. and ATM. Even regular asynchronous formats like DS-1 and DS-3 had to converted by multiplexers into OC format before being framed into SONET.
Unless there is a new supported IP protocol over SONET which this Gilder chap seems to be implying. Then it would be okay. But his statement of "physical layer infrastructure becoming more abundant" is gobbeldygook nonsense since the same supported framing formats, but just more SONET out there, makes no difference. Its the part about being more capable that I am not sure of.
As far as the percentages of network topologies planned, I can show you 8 different studies that say 8 different breakdowns of this, depending on the type of network (enterprise, private, backbone, general public, etc.) to support any position I'm trying to advance. As you say, there are large amounts of ATM being bought at all levels (for good reason), so I'm not sure where he gets these figures from.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help on this one, but sometimes I have to know what I don't know and not claim to know it. |
