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By
Charles R. Kenmore
Frequently, I read various trade articles, and it strikes me that we typically only talk about progressive, new innovations that stress novel ideas in the post-Internet era. Perhaps I’m a bit jaded, having gone through the ups and downs of the industry (e.g. the go-go-90’s, the tech bubble bust, and the latest recession). That said, when one looks at the telecom industry today, it’s really not that much different conceptually than nearly 25 years ago when the divestiture or break-up of Ma Bell (AT&T) occurred to stimulate competition, growth, and innovation in the telecom space. Sure we’ve met the goals of doing things faster, cheaper, and with better technology, but many of the same goals and themes are relevant in this new age of “social media networking,” “converged services,” and “triple or quadruple play” nomenclature. Instead of acronyms like SMDS, ATM, ISDN, SNA, and MS-DOS, we’ve simply developed new 4+ letter acronyms like E-LAN, DWDM, and the five-letter GMPLS to pick-up the slack. So is it just a matter of degree that we continuously improve? Have we actually learned from our past mistakes as we blaze new trails of innovation?
In retrospect, one could say telecom has, and is still, focused on many of the same underlying principles, goals, challenges, and processes that built the original TDM-based public phone network, but with an emphasis on newer IP-based networking technologies that leverage the largest IP-based public network called the Internet.
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We’ve met the goals of doing things faster, cheaper, and with better technology. |
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Two Steps Forward… IP and Lower Cost Carrier Ethernet Connections
Identifying network problems through various test mechanisms such as loopbacks, pings, OAM test packets, deep packet inspection (DPI), and other network troubleshooting tools has provided network visibility to carriers, service providers, and enterprise businesses for new IP/packet-based networks. In the past, legacy network providers had many years to perfect performance monitoring tools for detecting problems and enhancing the
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So how does all of this relate to network visibility and performance monitoring? I contend that once the dust has settled, many of the problems and challenges end-customers have with their network resources today are not that much different than 25 years ago but require newer packet-based approaches to achieve the same end goal of effectively managing one’s network resources faster, cheaper, and better than before.
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manageability and reliability of their TDM-based network. Typically, business end-customers’ network links used traditional TDM-based techniques such as loopbacks, BERT tests, byte and error correction counters for link visibility and performance monitoring of private lines, frame relay, and ATM circuits. An entire testing industry was born by companies developing fancy test sets and probes to address the
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