[comm] Last Tuesday Meeting Summary

[Gareth Hunt]

Guys,

Only Tracy, Gene, Ed, and I made it to the meeting last Tuesday.  There was a
conflict in Tucson, clearly, because an ALMA meeting was in progress there at
the time (0730 MST).

The following notes are recovered from my scrawlings and corrected by comments
from Gene.  Because of the various recent disturbances in my life, I have
completely misplaced my handouts, on which I had other notes.

So, although the following is in no way complete and may be repetetitve in
places, I want to get the gist of the AT&T meetings out (at long last).

Again, my apologies for the quality.

Cheers,
Gareth.
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1. AT&T Meeting to explain VLBA needs

  Presently (Apr 2001) support OC192 (10 Gbps) in backbone
  16,000 new miles at OC768 (40 Gbps)
  1.6 Tbps achieved by multiwavelengths each at 10 Gbps
    Available in 2001!
  There is a problem finding routers that will handle these speeds

  Optical Networking is growing faster than Moore's law

  Much research into optical switches
    Equivalent of electronic routers

  AT&T has 700 PoPs - more than any other carrier

  The "list mile" problem is still significant
    Getting OC3/12/48 from the main backbones to users

  Infrared transmissions were not discussed at this meeting
    Meeting participants not familiar with the technology
    The only (vague) statement they made was that the distances over
      which this is usable is less than for microwaves at present - only
      a few miles (??).
    Could possibly be used for "last mile" access to LEC (?) for VLBA
    Impractical for EVLA except for "last mile" access

  VLBA needs are 100 Gbps in 10 years
    No problem, clearly, with public packet switched networks
    Asymmetry irrelevant - no savings, fibers buried in pairs
    Low error rates not any saving, must provide high reliability

  Craig sent a list of VLBA locations to AT&T for cost estimates

  I believe that they said that the average cost to bury fiber i