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To: PaperChase who wrote (32)	8/21/1998 9:38:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 15615

PaperChase, >> but what happens when they upgrade their DWDM equipment and double or quadruple capacity practically overnight? What happens when competitors do the same? I guess I have made my point here. This is the industry/technology risk.<< Very well put. Bandwidth in riser shafts of tall business buildings and campuses is said to be near free, merely sunk materials and media costs, depreciated over five or so years covers it, and protocols which demand forgiving attributes like Gigabit Ethernet and other low-cost alternatives (including local premises ATM) prevail in those situations. Bandwidth waste and overhead is considered to be a no brainer, and in fact the legacy of most local area networking protocols has always been to depend on a certain amount of forgiveness in this regard. Such can be the case when bandwidth is free. Historically, this would have been considered a prohibitive and overly lavish use of bandwidth in the wide area network, or WAN, for obvious reasons. Those reasons being derived by the sheer scarcity of bandwidth per unit length, etc., for whatever the underlying reasons were... be they lack of competition, monopoly supply controls, technological unpreparedness, or whatever. Both of these contrasting models [i.e., the riser shaft and the WAN] speak something about the classic considerations concerning the economics of bandwidth. We are beginning to see a shift or a mutation in this model which is being enabled in large part by DWDM, and to an equal or greater extent because of the increasing homogeneity of IP deployment. Some examples of how this is taking place can be seen in recent releases. Gigabit Ethernet or GE is one such example, as it now appears that fat pipes and their offspring wavelengths will support GE over dedicated lambda for dedicated users in situations that heretofore were considered naive or ludicrous. I, myself, was involved in a debate two years ago whereby I promoted such an idea over in another forum with some IETF and Internet Society founders, and oddly enough they argued against it, quite convincingly, citing heresy to the use of a Layer 2 protocol in deference to Layer 3 IP protocols. Of course, Layer 2 supports Layer 3, but they didn't want to hear that at the time. Today we find it poised to be deployed in Metropolitan Area Networks (see recent article involving Washington State MAN exploits by competitive carriers), and guess what it will be supportive of? Virtually everything, including voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies. So, what's my point? My point is that we are seeing a not-so-gradual shift in the expectations on the parts of service providers these days in what can be placed over the wide area communications channels. Especially those employing current day DWDM capabilities. This will inevitably lead to modified uses of the medium, and a devaluation of unit pricing. At the same time there will be many more units to price out, so the question is can the economics of these two dynamics be kept in equilibrium, or will the supply side overpower the demand side for the new applications being sought after. Comments are welcome, and Regards, Frank Coluccio