Adding power distribution to Ethernet networks promises lots of improvements, says Martin Brampton. Without power over Ethernet IP phones could not do that. That is the standard for providing electrical power through ordinary Ethernet cabling.
SDH provides the reliability of circuit-switched pathways and resiliency should there be a fault but it is overly complex and not nearly as flexible as a native IP architecture when it comes to supporting Ethernet services, for example.
The virtual IPv6 backbone stretches from New Hampshire to California and will be permanent, so that equipment makers, software vendors, service providers and anyone else who would like to test IPv6 interoperability in a live network can do so.
The market researcher predicts carriers will spend $4.8bn on next-generation voice equipment by 2007, up from $1.2bn in 2003. This in my opinion gives you an opportunity to increase overall reliability, and is a strategy that we are already deploying.
The software is designed to be aware of network topology. As a result, it can trace attacks through the network and send out new security rules on the fly to firewalls, Ethernet switches or IP routers to kill the attack.
Wi-fi provides a good alternative to Ethernet cabling but until recently the technology has not provided enough capacity or reliability to be used for anything more than delivering data services. But most homes today aren't equipped with Ethernet...