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Nortel Networks |
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CLIENT: Nortel Networks MARKETING BACKGROUND: The most effective opinion pieces challenge the reader, and in this article Gerard Jacobs of Nortel Networks pulls no punches. We took his core argument, and placed it against a business truism that made for a compelling analogy. In just under 350 words, this analogy is built on to articulate a confident and provocative opinion. |
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According to the so-called 80-20 rule, most companies earn 80% of their revenues from just 20% of their customers. In the world of the network operator, the maths are strikingly similar. IP today can amount to as much as 80% of the traffic carried by some operators. In terms of revenue, however, it rarely represents as much as even 20%. The reason for this is IP's design. Created to enable the interaction
of computers across the world, IP is a 'best-efforts' solution. Entirely
suited to the demands of Internetworking and email - and even file downloads
- it doesn't provide the Quality of Service and reliability that corporate
networking needs (and, crucially, pays for). Proponents of IP networking
will point to MPLS as a solution. But ultimately, today's MPLS switches
cannot conceal all the weaknesses of IP as these switches are based on
the same IP architecture. IP Quality of Service, for instance, is based
on IP Class of Service - an aggregate method, rather than a platform with
true per- connection management. And if operators really want to be able
to support high-value mission-critical, delay-sensitive applications -
voice and video, of course, but also real-time enterprise applications
- then that kind of platform is exactly what they need. The beauty of this all, however, is that many operators already own precisely such a platform: a Frame Relay or ATM based infrastructure. Proven to be reliable, high- performance and offering the kind of traffic management capabilities that operators require, the Layer 2 network remains an invaluable source of carrier revenue. And the next generation MPLS switch will be based on this ATM platform in order to support the required per connection management which is mandatory for mission and time critical applications. Optical Ethernet will further increase the viability of this option. So where does this leave IP - and the IP infrastructures operators have
invested in? Quite simply, where it belongs: supporting the Internetworking
and 'best effort' traffic for which the protocol was |
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