José Ribamar Smolka Ramos
Telecomunicações
Artigos e Mensagens
WirelessBrasil
Março 2012 Índice Geral
03/03/12
• Mensagem de José Smolka (texto em
inglês): "NGN and traditional telecom vendors"
de J. R. Smolka smolka@terra.com.br por
yahoogrupos.com.br
para "Celld-group@yahoogrupos.com.br" <Celld-group@yahoogrupos.com.br>,
"wirelessbr@yahoogrupos.com.br" <wirelessbr@yahoogrupos.com.br>
data 3 de março de 2012 20:21
assunto [wireless.br] NGN and traditional telecom vendors
Hi people,
First of all let me explain wy I'm writing this in English. It's just because I
feel more comfortable with this language when I'm really pissed off. If I try to
write this in Portuguese it would probably have to be blocked by our dear group
moderators because of my liberal use of inadequate words.
Next question that raises is: why am I so pissed off anyway? That happens every
time I see how traditional telecom equipment/solution vendors behave when
selling IP-based networks, which we conventioned to call Next-Generation
Networks (NGNs).
Yesterday there was a message sent to celld-group, posted by Cesar Nunes, making
a few questions about NGNs. I've answered this message, but that's beside the
point here. What really interested me was another reply, sent by Juliano Correa,
which got an Ericsson presentation attached. Ericsson is *the* traditional
telecom vendor, and some points in that presentation slides did get me wanting
to kick Ericsson's ass. And so I'm doing.
Those slides were made - so it's said on the first slide - for a presentation
at the Advanced Level
Telecom Training Centre - ALTTC, at the city of Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh
province, India, about the network changeover being planned (and done?) at
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. -
BSNL, an Indian carrier headquartered at New Delhi, back in 2006.
Don't know how much of the network transformation outlined in those slides were
really put to carry real user's traffic, but there's something to say for the
network planning & design people from BSNL: not many carriers were seriously
contemplating so huge a network transformation at the time. Comes to mind
British Telecom Plc and it's
BT21CN project, and that's all.
Very well. So what's about those slides to anger someone like me? There's two
points, very characteristic of traditional telecom vendors of the time - and
today, which I feel truly irksome.
The first one is on the second slide, where there's the following phrase:
"Carrier class Telephony over IP – just VoIP not good enough". There are few
expressions that can put my patience in overdrive, but the use of "carrier class"
as an adjective to packet-switching solutions surely is one of them. This
implies that carriers' networks hover in another level of seriousness and
quality when compared with native IP solutions. Sorry, but this is one of the
cases where I see no option, except being rude. I have to say: carrier class my
ass.
I know this situation quite well. Back in the 1980's we (me included), IBM
mainframe professionals, used to say quite the same derogatory things about
using personal computers and LANs to build real-life, heavy-duty,
mission-critical computing systems. They just looked as interesting toys, but
using them to do real work? No way. Well, what really happened is history now.
Even me, seasoned IBM mainframe systems engineer (I used to work with VM/XA and
MVS/XA at the time), had to recognize the changing, volunteer to be at the
cutting edge of the changes, and set that our nascent TCP/IP corporate network
service level should be no less than that provided by the IBM SNA network (wich
was mainstream then). Either that or not receiving users' trust to change their
applications to the new network.
I remember that, when the project was still in design phase, we visited some
enterprises known for running big (by the standards of that time) TCP/IP
corporate networks. I told of this goal to one of our hosts, which already had
about 10 years of experience in LAN networking and TCP/IP internetworking, and
she laughed at me, saying that it was impossible to achive at the time. But we
did it. One and a half year after that conversation our corporate TCP/IP network
had about 1200 connected hosts, including the IBM mainframe, and users could use
their personal computers to access legacy applications through TN3270 and also
use personal productivity applications (spreadsheets, text processors and so on).
Traditional telecom vendors and carriers' network engineers posture about VoIP
is very similar. And will end the same way. Carrier's engineers have an excuse
at least: carriers' O&M work environment isn't very inviting for innovative
thinking. One could think that carriers'design & planning people would do better,
but - surprise! - they don't. I've been asking around and found that almost all
carriers don't have a network modernization rodmap of their own. They simply
take the easy way out: rely on their vendors' roadmap. I know it. Been there,
seen it from inside, found it un-fu**ing-believable, talked to everyone I could
about it. But made no difference. And that's why I feel that posture from
traditional vendors so unbearable. For their own business reasons (they still
have a cash-cow to milk away, after all) they've been instilling FUD over
carriers' people - and still do so today, and stalled network evolution for at
least a decade.
And the second irksome thing I've found is at slide 15. There's the information
that IP routing among the various elements of the proposed NGN solution (softswitches,
IMS, etc.) would be borne by Cisco routers. That's nothing remarkable per se,
but they add the following commentary: "carrier-class implementation meeting the
telephony requirements". I've seen some of those plain vanilla Cisco routers &
switches implementations with the "carrier-class" attached to them. Why so?
Looks like the idea is to convey the feeling that this kind of equipment is
better engineered than those which Cisco would sell to the rest of their clients.
Well... unless you think that buying the routers and switches with redundant DC
power sources makes them "carrier-class implemented", that's an outrageous lie.
And ever have you guessed why the "carrier-class" routing & switching solutions
are always top of line equipments? Cisco's 12K and CRS-1 routers still are top
of line today. Just imagine how unattainabe they looked back in 2006. But i
suspect there's a reason behind this.
The benevolent interpretation is that they simply don't know how to make
capacity planning for this kind of box, so they prefer to err on the plus side.
But there's a malevolent interpretation too: specify the top of line boxes imply
that less capable IP routing equipment won't be up to the task of carrying
telecom traffic. That's a huge bullshit. And there's the possibility of the two
interpretations being true. Ain't that beautiful?
I really hope that this message could spark some kind of debate in the
discussion groups - otherwise they won't be "discussion" groups anymore. It's
kinda lonesome keep talking without any feedback y'know? Wake up people! Say
what you think! What the fu** are you doing out there? Sleeping? I may be acid
and rough sometimes, but I don't bite. And even if you don't agree with me, it's
your right to do so, and to tell it to anybody who cares to hear.
Let's wake up people!
[ ]'s
J. R.
Smolka