(Internet Protocol + Ethernet Transport) x QoS – (The Public Internet / Net Neutrality) = Enterprise Peering
October 1, 2006
by Hunter Newby
Although mathematical equations may seem to be complex, they can be better understood if their fundamentals are isolated. Enterprise Peering is an evolution and inevitable given the lessons of the past. All that is possible will be, particularly if time is combined with the formula above, because with time comes the repetition of history. In order to better understand the evolutionary network path we're all on, let's break down the equation.
Internet Protocol — not the Internet, but rather the protocol itself — is widely used and acknowledged as THE common language for machines and devices of all types to intercommunicate. Enterprise networks have been using IP successfully for many years. It has been so successful that enterprise network managers actually connected their remote offices using IP to support applications of all sorts, including e-mail and even Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). In the past, the transport links that were used for the wide area connections were clear channel TDM, ATM and frame relay, but more about that in a moment.
Ethernet transport has been on the networking scene in a meaningful way for about the past three years. Today, it is widely available in the metro, long haul, and even international long haul network segments. The legacy transport protocols of ATM and frame relay have given way to the King of the Enterprise Road, Ethernet. This is due in large part to the fact that Ethernet has successfully been in the local-area network (LAN) for 15+ years.
In the early days, frame relay succeeded X.25 due to its increased capacity and, since it was digital and packet-based, it could carry the data protocols of the LAN with relative ease. Frame relay was also squarely focused on layers 1 and 2 and did not route packets as X.25 did. This was a clear advantage for frame relay, as it lowered the overhead and increased performance dramatically. Ethernet focuses in layers 1 and 2 as well, but has a key element that frame relay lacks, and that is the ability to create Virtual Local Area Networks — VLANs.
Within the last few years, transport carriers have finally started to come around to the possibilities of Ethernet. These services have been met with standards, it happens in a real physical place (usually a carrier hotel like 60 Hudson St.) and once it was complete it was seamless.
Certain carriers, such as WorldCom (UUNet), had very large frame relay networks with several large NNI's to other carriers such as Intermedia (Digex) and GTE/Genuity (BBN). These carriers' NNI's enabled their enterprise sales groups to sell end to end frame relay circuits with guaranteed QoS to the buyer since the carriers had established the NNI's at layer 2 all the way through their networks. This is exactly what is happening now with carriers establishing Ethernet connections end to end. I call them ENI's — Ethernet Network Interfaces; maybe that is a standard already, but I have not seen the term used.
The Internet, as we know, is a huge, shared network, based on routers running Internet Protocol that can be accessed in a variety of ways, frame relay being one of them. Does anyone remember the Burstable T1 Internet circuit? If not, it was the hottest selling "data" circuit of the late 90's. The Burstable circuit got its name from the delta between the CIR and EIR, the area in which the user could "burst" their traffic in a "best efforts" environment, of the transport carriers that supported it. (BBN's entire IP backbone was actually based on WorldCom frame relay circuits before it was sold to GTE.) That is the hierarchy of things.
Needless to say, the Internet created a new, non-enterprise class of buyer for the carriers, the Internet Service Provider, or ISP. They became the middlemen and facilitators for the enterprise to "get to" the Internet. The fact is that the Internet as a public network is decidedly different from frame relay, ATM, and other private, packet-based enterprise data networks carrying IP. The enterprise-managed, private Ethernet network phase we are all now entering is akin to enterprise private frame relay networks and is not new, unproven, or risky at all. It is actually a reversion back to what has already made sense.
The Net Neutrality debate actually throws fuel on the fire of the Internet versus private IP networks. The concept of a virtual private network, or VPN, emphasizes the need for privacy and security in enterprise networks, which the public Internet cannot guarantee.
Originally published in Internet Telephony magazine, October 2006 issue.
Hunter Newby was CEO of The Telx Group at the time of this publishing.
