Internet Backbone technology

[ramirez]

Out of curiosity, what are some of the types of technologies used for Internet Backbones? ATM, 10Gig-E IP, etc?

 

[spidey07]

packet over sonet (POS)

speeds range from OC12 - OC192, with multiple oc192s common.

some of the peering points will use multiple 10 gig ethernet between each provider.

ATM is thankfully facing it's demise.

For smaller broadband ISPs they normally build their own optical network, again...all sonet.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: spidey07
packet over sonet (POS)

speeds range from OC12 - OC192, with multiple oc192s common.

some of the peering points will use multiple 10 gig ethernet between each provider.

ATM is thankfully facing it's demise.

For smaller broadband ISPs they normally build their own optical network, again...all sonet.

how prevalent is Frame relay right now? heard it was almsot dead since people are ooglign all over the more capable MPLS.

 

[cmetz]

Goosemaster, with the death of Cascade, so too went Frame. More properly, Frame was eclipsed by ATM, and ATM was eclipsed by MPLS. You can still get Frame circuits at the usual speed levels, but you hit a wall at a certain performance level (I've seen Frame in the DS3 class, but not in the OC3 class). Similarly, you see ATM available at the (n x T1) level but mostly DS3 - OC12. Above OC12, it's pretty much MPLS (I don't think anyone ever made a line-rate OC48 ATM SAR...?).

I don't consider MPLS more capable, or maybe it's just that the new capabilities it has don't matter. I consider all three to be conceptually similar solutions to similar real-world problems where various parties piled on tons and tons of baggage to solve their whiteboard problems too. To circle back to the original topic, if you use any of the advanced capabilities of any of these three protocols, you'll build a network that your actual on-call support guys won't be able to fix. And that is a very bad thing.