Article 5

According to the senior vice president of data architecture at MCI Communications, "There is not a basic capacity problem." This sentiment is being echoed all over the country by other senior professionals in the field, as they say, that all the hype over limited bandwidth is unjustified. The only people they say who may be experiencing this problem is the individual user whose connection to the Internet is limited by the wiring and local internet service providers.

Take case in point MCI. MCI's underlying backbone network is composed of fiber-optic which carries MCI's voice, Internet and other data processing signals. This network operates at speeds ranging from 2.4 terabits per second to 3.75 terabits per second. Thats no mistake, the speed here is TERABITS and it will soon be upgraded to 10 Terabits per second. This speed at the physical layer, Layer 1, is more than sufficient for our needs and purposes well beyond year 2000. At Layer 2 or the wide area network, the highest speeds possible are through Synchronous Optical Network or SONET. SONET currently is running at speeds up to 4.96 Gbps. At peak load the speed may more typically be between 155 to 622 Mbps. Currently this is more than enough for todays traffic, and by year 2000 it is extrapolated to be around 10 Gbps.

The only problems with SONET use currently is the high cost factor and that it is a point to point link only service. This means that few business's currently have the kind of data load or need for Internet access that can match the money being paid for the SONET service. MCI and other phone companies are aggressively pushing this alternative though. For instance, if you commit to spending $20,000 a month on telephone service, MCI will build your very own 155 Mbps SONET link between your various offices and to the Internet for free. But, for many companies, currently the costs outweight the advantages.

So, although there is no bandwidth crisis, the true crisis may be in the prices which will require a price war between the offering companies before SONET is a widely used paradigm.

from an article in Byte magazine, April 1997

© Ranjit Sandhu, 1997