Move to IP. tele.com article includes AT&T plans
teledotcom.com
The Long Good-Bye for X.25
More service providers are modernizing
their internal networks--finally
By Dawn Bushaus.
Dawn Bushaus is Internet editor for tele.com. She is based
in Chicago and can be reached at
dbushaus@mcgraw-hill.com.
Here's one from the Practice What You Preach Department:
After years of selling their customers on the latest and greatest
in networking technology, telecom service providers finally are
moving to upgrade their internal operations support networks
by replacing X.25 and other aged protocols with IP
applications running across frame relay, ATM, or Sonet
networks.
The continued reliance on X.25--a protocol that dates back to
the mid-1970s for internal support networks and that typically
runs at an excruciating 64 kbit/s--has been one of the telecom
industry's dirty little secrets, given the fact that IP, frame relay,
asynchronous transfer mode, and Synchronous Optical
Network have been available for the better part of this decade
and are now routinely deployed in enterprise networks.
Transport technologies like ATM and Sonet deliver data rates
of 155 Mbit/s or more.
The shift away from X.25 started a couple of years ago but is
just now picking up momentum. The reason: Providers realize
older protocols simply can't keep up with the increased
demands coming from their internal networks that link network
elements such as voice and data switches, routers,
cross-connect systems, and multiplexers to network
management and operations support systems (OSSs).
Trend Spotting
Long-distance providers were first to start the X.25 legacy
migration by building frame relay, ATM, and Sonet networks
that can transport IP traffic; now Bell companies are making
the move to modernize their internal networks as well.
"Moving to IP is a universal trend in data networking," says
Ron Egan, manager of data and video planning at US West
Communications Group (Phoenix), the regulated telephone
company subsidiary of US West Inc. "It's the technology of
the future, so it makes sense for us to anticipate moving in that
direction with our internal networks."
There are plenty of reasons for service providers to update
their legacy operations support networks, but it all comes
down to speed, says Skip Williams, manager of data network
planning at Sprint Corp. Just as IP-based computing
applications are becoming the norm in enterprise networks,
IP-based applications are becoming more popular in service
provider network operations centers, Williams explains. Such
applications, which have become increasingly
graphics-intensive, require network elements to deliver more
data than X.25 networks can handle, he says.
The move to IP and high-speed transport is also an
acknowledgment that legacy systems eventually run their
course and must be replaced. IP is everywhere, which means
X.25 is nowhere. "IP has become the lingua franca of the
modern networking age," says Bob Rosenberg, president of
Insight Research Corp. (Parsippany, N.J.), a consulting
company. "All carriers are now moving toward using it in their
operations support networks."
Just Fade Away
The move to IP may be almost universal, but carriers are not
taking the same exact path to get there. Sprint began building
an internal router-based IP network about three years ago.
The provider has committed to linking all new network
elements to that internal network, but it hasn't scrapped all of
its legacy networks. "If the legacy applications are performing
well, we try to leave them in place and let them die a natural
death," Williams explains.
In contrast, AT&T and MCI Communications Corp. say they
are trying to eliminate most of their legacy internal network
gear right away. MCI has been working to cut over its X.25
network to a router-based IP network for the past two years,
says David McCoy, senior manager of that provider's Internet
network operations center. The project is about 75 percent
complete, he says. AT&T recently completed a three-year
upgrade of its old operations support networks--an X.25
network and an asynchronous network built in the early 1980s
using Datakit switches from AT&T Bell Laboratories (now
Lucent Technologies Inc.). AT&T is now running its internal
data on a single frame relay network.
Operational cost saving was a big driver for AT&T's upgrade,
says Andy Daudelin, manager of global network engineering at
AT&T. Most carriers run at least two if not three or four
separate internal operations support networks linking various
network elements. Voice switching equipment, for example,
might transmit data over one network, while data network
elements may use another network. Consolidating networks
means saving on the number of individual connections coming
out of each network point of presence or central office.
AT&T won't say how much it has spent upgrading its
operations support networks to frame relay, but Daudelin says
the provider was able to recover the cost of the upgrade in the
first 12 to 18 months the new network was operational. With
IP over frame relay, AT&T is moving about six times as much
traffic over its internal network than it was before the upgrade,
and its operational costs are 25 percent lower, he says.
In addition to realizing lower costs, AT&T's customer service
representative response time has improved with the new
network, Daudelin says.
Some More Than Others
While all service providers agree that they need to update their
internal networks, some are further along in the process than
others. Generally, long-distance providers have a head start
over their local counterparts. One reason may be that
long-distance carriers face more competition and therefore feel
more pressure to take advantage of innovation, says Tom
Nolle, president of Cimi Group (Voorhees, N.J.), a consulting
company. Another reason may lie in the relative complexity of
the local providers' operations support networks, which often
involve more types of OSSs and network elements. This
complexity may be dissuading telcos from abandoning systems
that work, even if they understand the benefits of doing so,
Nolle says.
On the local side, most incumbents confirm that a migration to
IP is under way, although they are reluctant to talk about what
they're doing. Bell Atlantic says it is using IP over ATM for its
internal support network, but the telco won't say how far along
it is with its migration. US West has begun upgrading its
operations support networks to IP, but it hasn't been easy to
convince the executives who control the purse strings that the
conversion is necessary, Egan says. It's hard to get funding for
a project like an internal network upgrade, which promises
operational savings, while other groups within the carrier
organization are requesting funding for projects that promise to
generate revenue, he notes. "We haven't just jumped on the
trend to move to IP," Egan says. "Everything we're doing is
tested by a business case."
Text Menu
tele.com Home Page
This Month's Issue
The Business Angle
Technology Fare
The Supply Side
Soap Box
Getting to Know Us
Back Issues
All use of this service is subject to the Terms and Conditions of Use.
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright c 1998 tele.com, The McGraw-Hill
Companies, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Website designed by COMPUGRAPHIA
Home page designed by Dennis Ahlgrim.
Last Modified: 29-Jan-98 |
