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At the Packet Transport Networks Conference in Milan Italy in July 2010, an ITU-T delegate Huub van Helvoort, said that there had been no progress with the standardization of MPLS-TP since the April 2009 PTN meeting. No doubt many delegates were scratching their heads wondering why standardizing MPLS-TP has proven to be so complicated. The answer is OAM.

There’s little debate that the internet has changed the way we communicate, access information, even source entertainment. The question is what impact do these changes have on network traffic patterns and what opportunities exist to optimize network architectures to better address these changes?

Information technology is an indispensable part of any business. Today all business processes are built around IT infrastructure. Nobody would consider running even the smallest business without IT support.

A lot of money has been invested in 40G and 100G transceiver technology, but 10G's relative price performance advantage continues to improve. There is a simple explanation - building high speed transceivers isn't simple.

The current generation of 40G transceivers have economics that is appropriate only for deployment by large tier-1 operators. The technology is too complicated and expensive for high volume deployment.

In 2003 Albert Laszlo Barabasi published a book on networking called 'Linked'. This book presented Barabasi's early insights on social, biological, business and computer networks. Barabasi had new sources of data to base his network research on - the structure of the Internet, and the linkages in the world wide web. 

Changes in a control system's outputs are driven based on changes in the input data.  The function of the input stage of the control system is to compare and filter input data.  Allowable output state may be constrained by the environment or limitations of the system. Feedback mechanisms compare the output with desired levels. Control loops must be carefully designed to respond quickly and accurately to changing conditions, while maintaining stability.  

All businesses are constrained by something. Profitability and growth are objectives of all businesses, and we all know how difficult it is to grow and to be profitable. It's constraints that explain why.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Today's technology subsumes technologies that were developed earlier. The result is compounding of capacity and functionality which results in exponential improvements with each new wave of products.

The Internet bootstrapped itself first on the shoulders of the old voice+PDH network, and then on the shoulders of the SONET and SDH transport network. The Web stands on the shoulders of the Internet. Mobile Apps are enabled by mobile, the Global Positioning System and the web.

Transport networks are different than IP and other service networks.  I think of transport in terms of a simple equation:

Transport = Transmission + Switching

Transmission

Transmission is the component of Transport systems that is associated with distance, and operates at the physical layer.

Transport networks have the following functional requirements:

G.709 Amendment 3 was approved by the ITU in April of 2009. Amendment 3 will have important implications for network operators all over the world. It defines new multiplexing capabilities that support both higher and lower speed interfaces. Cyan’s range of packet optical transport network platforms are designed to provide network operators solutions that support every advantage of G.709 based networking.