On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Jesper Skriver wrote:
Don't know how the world looks like in the US, but here a SDH/Sonet provider will never guarentee diversity of his/her circuit to that of a different provider, often the end user can be almost sure that at least the last few km will be in the same duct, as the local communities demand that the providers cooperation when digging fiber into the ground...
Hi Jesper. Delivery to a different provider is a little less clear, at least in Boston, but if you buy a "type 1" circuit directly from the provider, and your building is set up with two fiber entrances, you can actually get a real diverse circuit. Verizon even has a diversity option on their tariff, although there's some doubt as to whether or not they bother to make sure it is really diverse. I'd have to go ask the provisioning department about inter-provider diversity, but I would imagine tortured screams would be the standard reply. Of course, the caveat is that you never believe a provider when they tell you that you have working / protect on a diverse path, since the first fiber cut invariably points out some problem with the circuit engineering. -travis