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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (3409)	7/22/2001 3:42:34 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 46821

You're making the same observation that I did several posts back: Most access lines to residential and soho locations are unprotected extensions to the end user. Meaning, they follow a star topology defined by Telco and MSO distribution trees. In other words, dsl and other telco offerings, along with cablemodem and many of the new age forms of optical PON schemes, are all single line extensions to the end user with no means of fallback in the event of a cable cut between the user's premises and the last point of distribution in the provider's outside plant. From that standpoint, AHhaha pursued the argument that this shortcoming could be overcome through mesh topologies. And I agreed with that observation, citing a number of caveats. The main caveat being, the more you shore up a PON into a mesh, the lower the incentive is to use it, because the more meshy it becomes, the more expensive it becomes. Of course, this assumes that the mesh is being designed and supplied to a single user, and not in a community fashion to a group of users, as would be the case in one of those socialist-oriented networking schemes ;) ------ Then again, AHhaha would never endorse a communal form of networking. Right, Ah? What you are calling for is a form of mesh topology that a given user would pay for all on their own. Right? ------ BTW, redundancy is not the sole criterion for access reliability. Ideally, the second link would be both redundant and 'diversely routed.' Otherwise, a second line coming over the same cable, and/or off of the same pole, or out of the same manhole, would suffice (but doesn't). Ideally, there whould be no single point of failure that would affect both paths, up to a certain point. Not even where they enter the building (point of entry) or where they come up the risers once inside the building. In enterprise neteworking, controllers and security officers [and occasionally, outside insurance company auditors, as well] can have a field day during audits that are designed to identify violations of these rules. Which is a point that we haven't even broached, wrt access networks. But the reality suggests that business customers who control circumstances having to do with public interest and welfare must take every measure to ensure that the public interest and welfare are protected. Some of these situations are subject to federal and state statutes with very sharp teeth. The officers of small banks and brokerages (since we've been talking pons and meshing to sohos), in particular, can find themselves looking at "criminal" charges if their customers suffer at the hands of a cable break, or a prolonged outage that could have been avoided through the use reliable networking measures. The same holds true for data processing and disaster recovery preparedness.