Sensible Network Resilience and Diversity without Breaking the Piggy Bank

J. Stradling

Summary Bullets
•    Resilience and diversity can become very expensive
•    Architecting a sensibly-priced diverse network is feasible with thought and shopping around
Nearly every single international service provider is involved in cable-build projects in one way or another. For example Verizon has been building an eight-way trans-Pacific mesh network, and expanded its terrestrial mesh into eastern Canada. FT-Orange is increasing capacity in Latin America tenfold, and is involved in new submarine projects such as I-ME-WE (Asia-Europe), EASSy (East Africa) and Lion (linking Madagascar to SAT3/WASC/SAFE). AT&T meanwhile has over 200 Ciena CoreDirectors for control plane–based restoration in its intelligent optical mesh global network. Looking eastwards, several Asian tigers such as NTT Com, China Telecom and China Unicom have all been busy adding extra capacity as well marketing new land-based (e.g., trans-Siberian, Mongolian and through Russia) systems to give more choice and diversity. China Telecom sells the aptly termed ‘Information Silk Route’ as a well chosen brand message for its trans-Siberian network.