nanog mailing list archives

Re: IP and Optical domains?


From: Glen Kent <glen.kent () gmail com>
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2016 06:58:58 +0530

Mikael,

Thanks. I was looking at a technical problem. I say this because you may
not have this problem when both are networks are being run by the same
vendor equipment, say Alcatel-Lucent (or Nokia now). What are the technical
problems because of which ISPs need to over-provision when there are IP and
optical domains involved. OR rather let me rephrase my question --  what is
the technical challenge involved in setting up an end to end path between
two IP domains that have an optical domain in between.

Thanks, Glen

On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 3:30 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike () swm pp se>
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, Glen Kent wrote:

Can somebody shed more light on what it means to say that the IP and
optical layers are run as independent kingdoms and why do ISPs need to
over-provision?


You have a group that runs fiber+dwdm+sonet(or SDH). You have another
group that runs IP. When the IP guys ask "please tell us how the optical
network is designed, and can we coordinate how they're built and btw, we
want to put DWDM optics in our routers", the answer from the
fiber+dwdm+sonet group is "no, but we can help you with transport using our
transponders, please just order circuits, just give us addresses for each
end and we'll take care of things, don't you worry your little IP engineer
brain how things are transported long distance".

I believe this is still the case at a lot of ISPs. Not all, hopefully not
even most, but I'm sure there are some.

--
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike () swm pp se



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