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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Tier-1 without their own backbone?
In a message written on Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 04:39:42PM -0500, Matthew Sweet wrote:
> Alot of carriers that have a "Nationwide backbone" actually lease their
> circuits (Layer 1 and 2) through various other carriers.
There are actually a lot more layers than that, not that most people
interested in buying a circuit should care. Possible ownership changes
occur at:
- Owner of the right of way.
- Owner of the duct.
- Owner of the cable in the duct.
- Owner of the fiber in the cable.
- Owner of the wavelength on the fiber.
- Owner of the circuit on the wavelength.
- Owner of the channel on the circuit.
- Owner of the VC on the channel (at least, for MPLS, ATM, and Frame)
- Owner of the router.
(I'll stop there for backbone purposes.)
When people ask about ownership, I think they generally want to know the
answer to three related questions:
1) Do you have the ability to turn up additional capacity "in time"?
2) Do you own the right bits of infrastructure so you can control cost
(with right being the operative word, not a specific level)?
3) Do you have enough control over the chain above such that it won't
be broken if someone who owns another part goes Chapter 7|11?
I do wonder who owns it all. Most companies, even if they own their
own fiber (fiber in the cable, or cable in the duct) don't own the
duct or right of way. Many of the right of way owners don't do
circuit or IP services at all. As a practical matter, I'm not sure it
matters a whole lot where the divide is, as long as the company has
it structured so the answers to those three questions are positive.
--
Leo Bicknell - [email protected] - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - [email protected], www.tmbg.org
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