Glenn --
I came home with brain over-load but I'm glad I went. What's clear is that bandwidth demand is growing at rates that dwarf Moore's Law and the opportunities are enormous. Eventually terabit routers will form the core. That won't happen overnight. ATM is the best solution for fine-grained QoS and as you well know there are those who say any ol' service will do.
In terms of the protocol "war," I'm still not sure what sort of power the traditional telecom vendors will wield. If I'm reading it right, LU, Nortel, Ericsson, and others of that size, are pushing CSI, ATM. In other words, what NN's been supporting all along; and that the new carriers like Qwest and Level3 are more prone to back MPLS. UUNet would back Cisco if that would implement a standard but I get the feeling all they want is a clear decision. Am I close?
I also understand that at the higher gigabit speeds, the cell tax issue becomes redundant. "It just doesn't matter," I heard over and over. What's clear is that QoS is important and straight IP doesn't provide it today.
It's also clear DWDM will be the transport between the core and edge and that SONET's not going to go away, though some of its functions will.
Bandwidth over the last mile is a critical need --- DSL, cable, wireless, they all have a place.
Network management is a huge challenge and one every carrier needs to address.
Fixed wireless has definitely come out of the closet. All the major service vendors claim to have it. NorthPoint can deliver service in 3.3 business days.
The conference didn't focus on specific vendors, but there's no mistaking the two current leaders -- at least in mind share --- are Cisco and Nortel/Bay. Everyone knows the Lucent bear, though still in its cave, is not really in hibernation and will capture mind-share the minute it comes roaring into daylight.
My anticipation for what lies ahead is intense --- like a horse before the start of a race. While I don't know all that will come down, I have a suspicion the English language will be inadequate for the wordsmithing required by analysts and journalists who've misread the signals. (MacLellan may well consider a sabbatical.)
My favorite speaker was Ian Craig, Nortel's EVP and President Carrier Networks, who said there was massive switching capability needed --- an ideal network was coming but wasn't here yet. He quoted from Julius Caesar:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries,
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
and without a pause, added, "What he meant to say was, 'Show me the money.'"
He went on to say, and I'm quoting from my notes, "Think of the guys with circuit switches as owners of millions of customers. . . revenues are 80% from voice. . . services are ciritical. . . have to provide same services. . . data has to be 6 nines of reliability." Referring to data specialists: "Enterprise scale they know but they know about as much about global as the Spice Girls know about non-ferrous metal welding."
A few statistics: In 1996 there were 295 CLECS, in 1997, 985, and in 1998, 2832.
More random notes:
"We've assumed IP is future. . . some false assumptions. . . historical perspective. . is it too early to tell? Installed base won't go away. . . Look at ideal network. . . optical speeds. . . bandwidth. . . demand doubling every 100 days. . . DWDM accelerates line of bandwidth. . . terabits at core. . . optics not at end user. . . but must take it as close as possible. Edge has to be agnostic. . . access level is bottleneck. . . speed of ADSL rollout is lamentable. . . huge shift is occuring. . . every day seven days a week, 100,000 homes being passed. . . fiber being upgraded to 2-way. . . AT&T using cable. . . wireless coming very large way, pt to multipoint, RF. . . eEnormous value in SONET structure. . . some capabilities not valuable. . . some valuable: provisioning, protection. . . will use best of old world and put together with best of new. Needed at edge? Massive routers. . . voice onto LAN. . . PBX days numbered. . . ."
Based on everything I learned, I'm more convinced than ever my investments are well placed.
Gotta run ---
Pat |
