Should carriers remain lords of the rings or prepare to evolve their core networks to mesh topologies?
By Kathleen Richards If you’re suffering from information overload, you can relate to the current state of many communications networks because most carriers today face the same dilemma. It’s hard to know just what to do with all that data. As incumbent long-haul carriers grapple with the snowballing growth of Internet-protocol (IP) traffic, their ring architectures designed to carry voice services are proving inefficient for data transport. IP traffic, forecast to increase to 20 to 30 times its present size in 2002, will change the design and the architecture of the transport network over the next five years, according to Wit SoundView Corp. The catch-22 is that voice services still generate the majority of these carriers’ revenues. So what’s the best solution? Build more rings? Wait for the technology pieces to fall in place and migrate to mesh? Familiar ring Today, most carriers operate ring-based backbone networks to transport all traffic types and use multiple protocols such as IP
