www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/328401
By Patricia Fusco March 28, 2000 Two global service providers Tuesday announced plans to up their backbone speeds to 10 gigabits per second. UUNET Tuesday announced plans to upgrade its entire U.S. network to full line-rate OC-192 speeds. The MCI WorldCom (WCOM) subsidiary is currently activating OC-192 circuits with Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology between three of UUNET's major hubs in Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. Kevin Boyne, UUNET senior vice president of global network services declared OC-192 has arrived. "Business customers can now enjoy the benefits of full OC-192 transmission rates in the core of our network," Boyne said. Meanwhile, Cable & Wireless Plc. Tuesday announced it is carrying traffic over its first wire-rate clear channel OC-192 circuit between Washington and New York points of presence, increasing high bandwidth capacity to the area eight fold. Both UUNET and Cable & Wireless (CWP) deployed Juniper Network's M160 routers to manage accelerated traffic over the Internet backbone. The Juniper-enhanced circuit creates unprecedented capacity, quality of service and restoration capability to transparently deliver 10Gbps IP signals over a single fiber with a capacity up to 1.6 Terabits. Scott Kriens, Juniper Networks (JNPR) president and chief executive officer said Juniper is committed to building next-generation networks to lead the industry in service performance and high bandwidth. "Juniper's M160 router offers Cable & Wireless an UUNET a complete, predictable and stable service performance, while also allowing their backbone to grow with their customer base, and enabling the development of more advanced bandwidth intensive product offerings," Kriens said. Robert Flood, Cable & Wireless chief technology officer, said the upgrade lands Cable & Wireless on the forefront of delivering the industry's fastest high capacity Internet network. "With these network improvements, we are raising the bar for integrated communications providers," Flood said. The Washington, D.C. to New York 10 Gbps wire-rate clear channel circuit will transmit four times more high quality video and audio streams than any other competitor in the industry." The busy Washington, D.C. to New York corridor is currently supporting increased traffic, while also providing additional capacity between the network's major international gateways in those cities. This single OC-192 circuit will allow Cable & Wireless to transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress from Washington, D.C. to New York in seven seconds. In December 1999, Cable & Wireless announced the activation of OC-192 fiber capacity between Washington and New York. Future plans include activating additional OC-192 capability in other major areas in the U.S. in the first and second quarters of 2000. The completion of nationwide OC-192 deployment is expected in the fall of 2001. UUNET plans to expand its rollout of OC-192 circuits running MPLS to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Sacramento in the third quarter of this year, with other major U.S. hubs to follow throughout 2000. The company will continue to implement MPLS technology on these links to allow for sophisticated traffic engineering capabilities on a single integrated platform. MPLS addresses performance optimization of operational networks and allows UUNET to deliver high quality service to its customers. UUNET recently completed activating OC-48/STM-16 links throughout Europe and the Americas. Plans for international deployment of OC-192/STM-64 are currently under development. Both the UUNET and Cable and Wireless apply Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technology to transmit data over their respective high-speed optical networks. SDH is the international equivalent of Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) data transmission in the U.S. Both technologies provide faster and less expensive network interconnections than traditional Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy (PDH) equipment. In digital telephone transmission, synchronous means the bits from one call are completely carried within one transmission frame. Plesiochronous means almost, but not quite synchronous, or a call that must be extracted from more than one transmission frame. |