Faced with continued high growth in IP traffic, large installed bases of TDM services and ele- ments that are not going away anytime soon, and slow revenue growth overall, operators are wrestling with how best to upgrade their networks to handle their network traffic and service de- mands, while remaining viable and competitive business entities. The core network, in particular, is becoming a key focus area for many operators worldwide, following several years of invest- ments in their access and metro networks.
This white paper assesses the key pain points operators face in the core and provides an over- view of the main architectural options available to them. Specifically, we discuss switched Sonet/ SDH networks (the PMO), integrated optics on core routers (IP over DWDM), and switched OTN networking. Heavy Reading makes the case for switched OTN networking, combined with 40- Gbit/s and 100-Gbit/s transport, as the best architectural approach for operator core network modernization.
About Jan Bear