Tellabs Blog

A survey of 400 attendees at this year's Futurecom trade show in Sao Paulo, Brazil, revealed that service providers have a major challenge: how to handle Internet traffic cost-effectively.

That's not exactly shocking news.

Internet traffic is indeed a problem. To combat it, service providers around the world are making significant investments in core IP networks.

What's more interesting is that only 18% of respondents have deployed packet technology to help. Even fewer have brought dense wave-division multiplexing (DWDM) technology to bear on the problem. Service providers are missing an opportunity by not incorporating packet-optical transport technology into either the core or metro part of their networks.

Find the price that fits your network
Core IP networks do offer flexible support for enhanced service features. But they also have higher total costs of ownership (learn why).

Yet service providers can reduce that TCO by offloading from the routers 80% of all the IP traffic traversing their core networks. Because that 80%--consumer Internet, IPTV, VoIP and VoD services--typically goes to only one or two peering points in a given metropolitan area, it doesn't need to go through the routers.

Service providers can save up to 51%-75% of capex by using packet-optical transport technology to bypass core routers. In our survey at Futurecom, only 6% of respondents claimed they believed that to be true.

Don't put all that work to waste
But for some service providers, updating the network core that they've made huge investments in may not make sense.

Instead, service providers can deploy a packet-optical transport solution in their metro networks. This will help solve scalability issues that accompany traditional Metro Ethernet solutions. Plus, integrating Carrier Ethernet with the optical layer offers the lowest cost per bit and future-proof scalability. It also enables service providers to handle exponential bandwidth demands.

Additionally, it enables service providers to integrate existing SDH networks and offer additional services that are not possible when using traditional metro Ethernet solutions.

Last but not least, packet-optical transport technology has inherent protection and restoration features. This ensures that high priority traffic is protected and/or restored with the same performance as in a deterministic network.

A puzzling disconnect
So, a packet-optical transport solution boosts network capacity and reduces costs by decoupling capacity and network costs.

However, our survey showed that service providers are underestimating the benefits they could receive from using packet-optical technology in the metro and core networks to deliver Internet, VoIP and IPTV traffic.

• It could save them 65% of energy costs. Only 4% of respondents claimed they believed that to be true.
• Only 10% claimed they thought it could save them 51%-75% of space.
• It could improve network resiliency by 51%-75%. Only 12% claimed they believed that to be true.
• Only 8% claimed they thought it could improve core network latency by 1,000 times.

Now that you've seen how much you can save, what's your perception of packet-optical transport?

Here's some additional information about our survey methodology:

• Futurecom took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Oct. 25-28. More than 13,000 people attended.
• Tellabs surveyed 400 attendees at our booth during that time. Respondents answered an individual questionnaire.