On Sat, Oct 09, 2010 at 10:24:16AM -0400, Christopher Morrow wrote:
why not just buy a wave on someone's dwdm system? (why mpls, I suppose, for what sounds like a ptp application)
The native wavelength for most longhaul DWDM systems is 10G, and not everybody needs to buy bandwidth in 10Gbps increments. Waves are also unprotected, and you're expected to buy multiple diverse paths and manage your own protection if you'd like the service to stay up. In this type of situation, where the customer doesn't have much economy of scale and needs to buy 2x10G of waves just to get 10G of protected bandwidth, MPLS transport can often be a cheaper, more reliable, and more flexible solution, even for point to point applications between major points on commodity routes. In this particular scenario, if they need less than say 4-5 Gbps, need to be burstable, or are after specific latency and/or protection goals, MPLS would probably be a clear winner over waves. But note that I still have enough shame not to spam the list with pointers to the MPLS transport services my company offers. :) -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)