Yes, I really don't understand that either. You would think that
the
investment in developing and deploying all that SONET infrastructure has been paid back by now and they can lower the prices dramatically. One would think the vendors would be practically giving it away, particularly if people understood the potential improvement in performance, though the difference between 1500 and 4000 is probably not all that much except on long distance ( >2000km ) paths.
Careful, you're rapidly working your way up to nanog kook status with these absurd claims based on no logic whatsoever.
My aploligies. It just seemed to me that the investment in SONET, particularly the lower data rates, should be pretty much paid back by now. How long has OC-12 been around? I can understand a certain amount of premium for something that doesn't sell as much but the difference in prices can be quite amazing in some markets. Some differential might be justified but why so much? An OC-12 SFP optic costs nearly $3,000 from one vendor, list. Their list price for a GigE SFP optical module is about 30% of that. What is it about the optic module that would cause it to be 3 times as expensive for an interface with half the bandwidth? A 4-port OC-12 module is 37,500 list. A 4-port 10G module is $10,000 less for 10x the bandwidth. In other words, what is the differential in the manufacturing costs of those? I don't believe it is as much as the differential in the selling price.