Abstract

Carrier metropolitan networks have transformed in to optical networks from asynchronous electrical networks with the standardization and proliferation of SONET deployment. While the traditional approach of homing the traffic from edge nodes to central hub nodes and performing centralized grooming of lower rate services has worked for voice and private line centric service model, carriers are migrating from centralized large WB-DXC at core hubs to distributed grooming model for low speed services due to the distributed nature of data services. Other factors driving such a migration are multi-vendor interoperability of UPSR/BLSR and maturity of third generation SONET/SDH technologies (GFP/VCAT/LCAS) for efficient transport of fast growing data service traffic. Due to the size of the deployed network assets and optimizing operations coming out of the recent economic down turn, carriers are continuously searching for a better value proposition.

© 2005 Optical Society of America