Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
All, Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially interesting for me, with my focus being on the future implications of the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network planners in both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed. These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee-well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers? While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where their services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However, the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy-back atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering. But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon, SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible. Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack. frank@coluccio.net ------
Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard.
Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts? Or was this type of service "good enough"? --Michael Dillon
So although we have the technology to build networks controlled at the edge and networks that are less subject to failure, the old business models that we cant seem to break out of insist that we remonopolize walled garden telephone monopolies. Why? Because we imagine them to have wondrous new capabilities of economy of scale. We concentrate the fiber and the switching centers into evermore centralized potential points of failure. We rob ourselves of redundancy. As with the cisco router monoculture in our backbones which god help us if it ever failed, we are now building a potential concentration of fiber. Higher and potentially more fragile than the twin towers. How sad. How can we gain some understanding of other ways to look at infrastructure? This is terribly short sighted. How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large? ============================================================= The COOK Report on Internet Protocol, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA 609 882-2572 (PSTN) 415 651-4147 (Lingo) cook@cookreport.com Subscription info: http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml New report: Where is New Wealth Created? Center or Edge? at: http://cookreport.com/14.07.shtml ============================================================= On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:51 PM, Frank Coluccio wrote:
All,
Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially interesting for me, with my focus being on the future implications of the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network planners in both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed.
These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee- well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers?
While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where their services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However, the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy-back atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering.
But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon, SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible.
Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack.
frank@coluccio.net ------
Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard.
Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts?
Or was this type of service "good enough"?
--Michael Dillon
The unfortunate part of all this is there is a demand for diversity, especially from the financial and government sectors. One of the big problems is that clients seldom know which providers or combinaiton of providers give them the most diversity. There are some intersting ways to claculate the optimal set of providers by price and diversity, but getting the data is quite difficult. Sometime large clients like the US government can leverage providers into divulging routing and right of ways, but is definately the exception. Even from our rough analyses there are several areas of heavily shared colocation. Sounds like the problem is getting worse and not better. ----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com> Date: Monday, August 8, 2005 4:17 pm Subject: Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
So although we have the technology to build networks controlled at
the edge and networks that are less subject to failure, the old business models that we cant seem to break out of insist that we remonopolize walled garden telephone monopolies. Why? Because we imagine them to have wondrous new capabilities of
economy of scale. We concentrate the fiber and the switching centers into evermore centralized potential points of failure. We rob ourselves of redundancy. As with the cisco router monoculture in our backbones which god help us if it ever failed, we are now building a potential concentration of fiber. Higher and potentially more fragile than the twin towers. How sad.
How can we gain some understanding of other ways to look at infrastructure? This is terribly short sighted.
How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand
they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large?
============================================================= The COOK Report on Internet Protocol, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA 609 882-2572 (PSTN) 415 651-4147 (Lingo) cook@cookreport.com Subscription info: http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml New report: Where is New Wealth Created? Center or Edge? at: http://cookreport.com/14.07.shtml =============================================================
On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:51 PM, Frank Coluccio wrote:
All,
Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially interesting for me, with my focus being on the future
the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network
both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed.
These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention> service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee- well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will> become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either> business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers?
While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where
implications of planners in their> services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of
places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However,> the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy- back> atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering.
But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon,> SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible.
Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack.
frank@coluccio.net ------
Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard.
Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts?
Or was this type of service "good enough"?
--Michael Dillon
The unfortunate part of all this is there is a demand for diversity, especially from the financial and government sectors. One of the big problems is that clients seldom know which providers or combinaiton of providers give them the most diversity. There are some intersting ways to claculate the optimal set of providers by price and diversity, but getting the data is quite difficult.
First of all, I think the terminology is part of the problem. Historically, people bought redundancy or diversity by choosing two different providers or perhaps by asking one provider to provide two different routes, i.e. dual entrance. But this was not enforced contractually and it certainly was not built into the business and operational processes of the carriers. Redundancy and diversity where just a fantasy shared between customers and their sales reps. There are some large enterprises who build their internal operations around data centres and Storage Area Networks, essentially disk farms that are connected to multiple locations with application servers. These people chose to use the word "separacy" to refer to a network connections that do not share fate anywhere along the path. That means that they do not share the same fibre, or cable, or conduit, or street/tunnel/bridge. In my company we use this term for the way in which we deliver various market data feeds over IP networks to our customers. In addition to the physical separacy our network does not have a single best route at the IP layer. There are two paths through different circuits and different routers and all packets take both paths simultaneously. Now obviously, either the SAN style of separacy or the market data feed style costs a bit more money. But the benefit to the customer is that the concept of seperacy is built into the business and operational processes, i.e. it is not just a polite fiction of sales people. Of course, we like all other ISPs, continually struggle with carriers who don't have this concept themselves and must continually check, monitor and double-check the carrier's grooming practices. I think that in order to resolve this issue on the large scale we need to have a shared vocabulary and a shared vision of building a resilient network that is not brittle. The rhetoric of an Internet with one level of service that is "good enough" has fogged people's thinking. And the rhetoric of a network with magic software knobs to provide multiple levels of service has also fogged people's thinking. Until we reach general agreement that the way to make a network resistent to failure is to provide multiple redundant paths at all layers from physical to IP, this situation will not improve. --Michael Dillon
When is that book of yours coming out? -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of sgorman1@gmu.edu Sent: Monday, August 08, 2005 1:34 PM To: Gordon Cook Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers The unfortunate part of all this is there is a demand for diversity, especially from the financial and government sectors. One of the big problems is that clients seldom know which providers or combinaiton of providers give them the most diversity. There are some intersting ways to claculate the optimal set of providers by price and diversity, but getting the data is quite difficult. Sometime large clients like the US government can leverage providers into divulging routing and right of ways, but is definately the exception. Even from our rough analyses there are several areas of heavily shared colocation. Sounds like the problem is getting worse and not better. ----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com> Date: Monday, August 8, 2005 4:17 pm Subject: Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
So although we have the technology to build networks controlled at
the edge and networks that are less subject to failure, the old business models that we cant seem to break out of insist that we remonopolize walled garden telephone monopolies. Why? Because we imagine them to have wondrous new capabilities of
economy of scale. We concentrate the fiber and the switching centers into evermore centralized potential points of failure. We rob ourselves of redundancy. As with the cisco router monoculture in our backbones which god help us if it ever failed, we are now building a potential concentration of fiber. Higher and potentially more fragile than the twin towers. How sad.
How can we gain some understanding of other ways to look at infrastructure? This is terribly short sighted.
How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand
they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large?
============================================================= The COOK Report on Internet Protocol, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA 609 882-2572 (PSTN) 415 651-4147 (Lingo) cook@cookreport.com Subscription info: http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml New report: Where is New Wealth Created? Center or Edge? at: http://cookreport.com/14.07.shtml =============================================================
On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:51 PM, Frank Coluccio wrote:
All,
Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially interesting for me, with my focus being on the future
the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network
both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed.
These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention> service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee- well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will> become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either> business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers?
While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where
implications of planners in their> services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of
places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However,> the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy- back> atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering.
But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon,> SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible.
Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack.
frank@coluccio.net ------
Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard.
Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts?
Or was this type of service "good enough"?
--Michael Dillon
The latest is in the warehouse this september. Thanks for the interest. best, sean ----- Original Message ----- From: Sam Crooks <sam.a.crooks@gmail.com> Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2005 10:06 am Subject: RE: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
When is that book of yours coming out?
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of sgorman1@gmu.edu Sent: Monday, August 08, 2005 1:34 PM To: Gordon Cook Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
The unfortunate part of all this is there is a demand for diversity, especially from the financial and government sectors. One of the big problems is that clients seldom know which providers or combinaiton of providers give them the most diversity. There are some intersting ways to claculate the optimal set of providers by price and diversity, but gettingthe data is quite difficult. Sometime large clients like the US government can leverage providers into divulging routing and right of ways, but is definately the exception. Even from our rough analyses there are severalareas of heavily shared colocation. Sounds like the problem is getting worse and not better.
----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon Cook <cook@cookreport.com> Date: Monday, August 8, 2005 4:17 pm Subject: Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
So although we have the technology to build networks controlled
at
the edge and networks that are less subject to failure, the old business models that we cant seem to break out of insist that we remonopolize walled garden telephone monopolies. Why? Because we imagine them to have wondrous new capabilities
of
economy of scale. We concentrate the fiber and the switching centers into evermore centralized potential points of
failure. We rob ourselves of redundancy. As with the cisco router monoculture in our backbones which god help us if it ever
failed, we are now building a potential concentration of fiber. Higher and potentially more fragile than the twin towers. How sad.
How can we gain some understanding of other ways to look at infrastructure? This is terribly short sighted.
How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand
they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large?
============================================================= The COOK Report on Internet Protocol, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA 609 882-2572 (PSTN) 415 651-4147 (Lingo) cook@cookreport.com Subscription info: http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml New report: Where is New Wealth Created? Center or Edge? at: http://cookreport.com/14.07.shtml =============================================================
On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:51 PM, Frank Coluccio wrote:
All,
Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been
the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network
both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro
especially> > interesting for me, with my focus being on the future implications of planners in transport> > layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed.
These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in
order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that
business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention> service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee- well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will> become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either> business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers?
While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where their> services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However,> the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy- back> atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering.
But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon,> SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible.
Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack.
frank@coluccio.net ------
Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard.
Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts?
Or was this type of service "good enough"?
--Michael Dillon
participants (5)
-
Frank Coluccio -
Gordon Cook -
Michael.Dillon＠btradianz.com -
Sam Crooks -
sgorman1＠gmu.edu