Design of optical transport networks?

[Qacer]

Hey folks... If you were building a transport network consisting of various optical transport technologies (e.g., SONET, DWDM, etc.), what kind of metrics would you use (e.g., BER, latency, etc.) to procure these transport services from various providers (i.e., to create a service level agreement)?

Also, is there a source where I can find standard or typical values of these types of metrics?

Thanks!

 

[Railgun]

Depends on the market you`re in. How much does latency matter? How much does reliability matter? What kind of bandwidth are you looking for? What kind of distances are you running across and what kind of topology? What kind of future proofing do you need? Will you do 10Gb? 40 soon after? 100? Are you concerned about the equipment they use (Cisco, Tellabs, Ciena, etc.)

Once you know what you want, then you can shop out to the carriers and see what they can provide. There are several considerations to take into account, but those are questions you need to ask yourself before taking the next step.