_{SONET -- Sonet is joining the broadband crowd and carriers are aggressively strutting its stuff. Sure it has turbo-charged bandwidth, but is it overkill?}

_{By Rivka Tadjer}

_{It may seem like you never have enough network bandwidth for today's demanding applications, but how much is enough? Perhaps more than any other WAN technology, Sonet transport technology looks to many users like bandwidth overkill. Even in a world where bandwidth is king, Sonet's niche is among high-end fiber optic major leaguers-no small-timers need apply.}

_{Its primary users, in fact, are telecommunications carriers and telephone companies that use the service for their internal needs or for public-network resale. Yet increasingly, Sonet is being marketed as a viable public or private network-transport solution. What it promises is a vendor-independent standard network interface that runs at standard optical carrier (OC) published rates-from OC1 at 51 megabits per second, to OC48 at 2.4 gigabits per second-the highest level now available.}

_{Of course the mega-bandwidth comes at a price-from $100,000 to millions of dollars, to be exact. Moreover, it is really only useful for a select universe-companies mainly in financial services, utilities, entertainment, huge conglomerates or large research centers with multiple campuses within a single region or those that already have FDDI fiber lines installed. In Research Triangle Park, N.C., for instance, high-tech companies have roaming facilities all within roughly 30 miles of one another and fiber already is available. Atlanta is another potential hot spot for Sonet because the Olympics have catalyzed area telephone companies and other service providers to lay the necessary fiber.}

_{Nevertheless, for a typical mainstream enterprise with an office on each coast and perhaps a couple in the Midwest, Sonet is not a realistic option.}

_{Eric Hyde, director of data and video products at Ameritech, admits there are some pretty stiff criteria used to determine whether you're a candidate for Sonet. "The need to have a robust design process to make certain the application is running well is not to be underestimated," he warns. "And if, for example, there's a remote site where there's no fiber in place, watch out-the price can skyrocket."}

_{A New Push}

_{So why all the interest in so limited a technology? Besides the obvious burgeoning bandwidth requirements, Sonet is getting a new push from vendors. The former Bell operating companies, in particular, have a lot of reason to make it worth your while to buy Sonet, says Jay Baylock, vice president and research director at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group Inc.}

_{"It might have to do with them having certain routes with extra capacity so they want to sell it, or they might want to buy mind-share. For instance, they might want to own a certain vertical market, like ISPs, or simply enter new markets." Baylock adds that interexchange companies-particularly AT&T, LDDS Worldcom Inc. (the network services division of Worldcom Inc.), MCI and Sprint -are often even more motivated than the Bell operating companies to move people from T3 to Sonet.}

_{Telephone company competition has never been more fierce, especially since the communication deregulation that promises the Bell operating companies opportunities to build their businesses exponentially.}

_{But the companies will have to bring costs down significantly to attract a broader base of customers. In general, wherever there's a point-to-point connection where T1 and T3 lines run, upgrading to Sonet may be prohibitively expensive. And if you have a network with two or three locations but less than five T1s, Sonet is not for you. Design costs, Hyde says, should not overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits of Sonet cost-saving services. The theory is that the money you'll save on transfer speed will make the return on investment fast and well worth it. If it doesn't, you're probably not ready for Sonet.}

_{Still, for that exclusive-and growing-number of customers that fit the profile, Sonet is touted as a whiz-bang transport mechanism that will pay for itself in network efficiency, virtual LAN access on the WAN, disaster-recovery assurance and room to grow into the future of multimedia traffic on the WAN.}

_{"Sonet has standards-compliant transport-go ahead, put anything in the Sonet ring for transport," says Randy Brumfield, manager of product marketing at Santa Clara, Calif.-based OnStream Networks Inc. "Channelization lets you break Sonet into tributaries that support ISDN, T1, T3-anything. And it's reliable, survivable and overhead channels let you do all the maintenance. It doesn't matter if it's a public or private network."}

_{Vendors are particularly playing up Sonet's strengths in three areas: ATM support, disaster recovery and industry standards. To hear the marketers tell it, Sonet is the best transport system for WAN-level ATM, and not just for the relatively small number of companies whose already giant, 45-Mbps T3 lines are bursting at the seams with gridlocked traffic.}

_{As for strong disaster-recovery elements, the ring-based design eliminates a single point of failure. With a so-called survivable ring, there are three or four nodes. If the traffic flow is interrupted between two nodes for some reason, the Sonet transport system simply finds another route to get the traffic around without going down.}

_{A Standard Solution}

_{Finally, in this vendor-driven market, telephone company proponents say that because Sonet is both an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and CCITT standard, and therefore compatible with any broadband traffic, companies with private networks can make use of Sonet. Especially well-suited are those with two or three corporate campuses within driving distance of each other but also with public land between them. The hefty investment will be well spent, the argument goes, because the inevitable technological road that lies ahead is a fiber one. But takers for private network services to date are few and far between.}

_{When Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Insurance Co., which reported 1995 revenues of $18.3 billion, signed up for public-network Sonet services from Ameritech about a year ago, it was mainly to get local access for voice services. One of Nationwide's network managers, who asked to remain anonymous, says the move from T1 lines to Sonet made sense. Before Sonet, the company was using 50 or 60 1.544-Mbps T1 lines just for voice, which made it not only expensive, but also a little ridiculous not to use the bigger conduit, he says. The Nationwide home office in Columbus is a complex of three buildings that together house roughly 15,000 multiprotocol nodes. A data center is located about 15 miles north.}

_{The flexibility of dynamically allocating bandwidth was also a key lure for Nationwide. Although it's certainly useful for daily network traffic, for disaster recovery, it's invaluable.}

_{The Deal Clincher}

_{What may have clinched the Sonet decision, though, was Ameritech's aggressive pricing. Nationwide wasn't charged for the fiber Ameritech laid-only for the monthly service, which runs about $20,000. This kind of aggressiveness, as Baylock points out, can only help local exchange carriers trying to gain entry into new markets.}

_{"They [Ameritech] were aggressive about offering Sonet services because the regional Bell holding companies want to get in the door with local access so that later they may well get our long distance service," the Nationwide LAN manager says.}

_{This sort of deal-making is also a factor that could make Sonet appealing to more mainstream companies as time goes on-and as applications such as videoconferencing and video training, which are ravenous for bandwidth, become more popular.}

_{Hyde admits that there's a golden opportunity for Sonet sales right now. "It's definitely a good marketing entree for the Bells," Hyde says. "And because pretty much everyone is offering the service, the competition to differentiate services is also heating up." Success for a Bell operating company in this market niche, he claims, depends on how good the service management is. And it's worth focusing on good service, because it's quite a promising market.}

_{"Because Sonet is a standard transport medium for virtually all large enterprises, I see tremendous activity across a bunch of vertical markets-especially financial services, local telephone companies and manufacturing," Hyde says.}

_{The Nationwide network manager, however, points out that the one glaring problem he had with Ameritech was "poor project management skills in setting up Sonet." Be prepared, he advises, to work through a lot of organizational problems.}

_{But since it can cost anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to millions-if you don't already have the fiber laid-to get Sonet running, analysts like Baylock suggest that bumps in the implementation road may be worth the hassle if the Bell operating company lays your fiber for free. Of course, not every company will get this royal treatment; the Bell operating company will have to see big business down the road to go to the trouble.}

_{A better way to gauge pricing is to figure that you'll pay about a 10 percent premium over asynchronous services for Sonet services, says Mark Vida, vice president and general manager for network product systems at Clearwater, Fla.-based Tadiran Telecommunications Ltd.}

_{Bear in mind that price estimates are just for services. Lots of additional hardware costs are either basic or they optimize the Sonet system.}

_{The multiplexer, for example, is fundamental and will cost roughly $20,000. OnStream offers the BMX45-a high-end broadband bandwidth manager and multiplexer that reroutes circuits if failures occur. It has dynamic bandwidth allocation and reassesses bandwidth-critical applications if there's a failure.}

_{And this product is targeting private networks making the move from T1 to ATM. It has different network and application modules that let you connect to customer premises equipment routers, channel extenders, etc. On the network- infrastructure side, OnStream officials claim you can send information over the network in T1, T3 or Sonet speeds. For example, you can multiplex the communication from the customer site across the WAN.}

_{But for a smaller company, such as OnStream, the multiplexer competition is fierce because it comes from folks like AT&T-or AT&T spin-off Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, N.J. Its multiplexer, the DDM-2000, scales from OC1 through OC48, with a competitive feature set and a base price of $20,000 for OC1. Lucent's Sonet product manager, Brian Milewski, claims most DDM-2000 customers are other service providers-although smaller ones than AT&T, to be sure. The one thing analysts say to expect from vendors such as OnStream is great service, simply because they have to take on the Goliath competition.}

_{Some optional hardware costs also can creep up on you. For instance Tadiron's product, the T::DAX, offers a wideband digital cross-connect system that starts at $50,000. Why would you need this over and above a multiplexer? Well, for automating the routing at the hub site, a multiplexer is fine, but you'll still have to manage the end-site routing manually. Cross-connect systems such as T::DAX automate routing at the end site as well, so if there's poor line performance at the receiving end of the transmission, it will monitor and redirect automatically. If the whole point of Sonet is speed, this product makes sense. Additionally, in case of line failure, rerouting at the end site becomes even more important.}

_{Whatever the final configuration, don't expect a mere 10 percent premium over synchronous services in overall price. Save that figure for the monthly service rates, analysts say. Sonet can run $200,000 or more in setup costs, even if you've got the fiber.}

_{"That price can, however, be well worth it for the right corporate profile," Ameritech's Hyde says. But he adds that Sonet is not for everyone. LAN administrators should carefully consider resources, needs and projected growth before investing.}

_{Bandwidth Bandits}

_{The problem is, however, that no single factor can determine whether Sonet is right for you, Gartner Group's Baylock says. It may seem that unless you're an insurance conglomerate that can sway a regional Bell to cut a deal, you might as well forget it. But remember, bandwidth-hungry communications, the Internet and multimedia applications are fast becoming an integral part of doing business, whether the company is large or small. These applications are driving the market toward ATM, and, in turn, toward Sonet because it is such an efficient transport for ATM.}

_{"Everyone has different needs," Baylock says. "But don't forget that private enterprises are now commonly consuming as much as OC48-oil and gas companies, utilities, financial-services companies and entertainment companies. Communications will increasingly drive the market for everyone." Setup costs notwithstanding, the other compelling market factor is that people want a transparent LAN within a corporation that has more than one location, according to Neri Brutzkus, an Israel-based corporate vice president of business technologies at Tadiron, who deploys Sonet installations both in Israel and domestically. "What we're seeing is that companies don't want communications to be impeded just because they have a WAN. In both private and public enterprises, there is a lot of demand for bandwidth."}

_{Cray Research Inc. is thinking about using Sonet, says Tom Stevens, senior network analyst at the Chippewa Falls, Wis.-based supercomputer maker. As someone familiar with scalability issues, he says Cray is the perfect profile for Sonet. With 1995 revenues of $676 million, Cray employs 3,700 people and is home to a 3,000 to 4,000-node IP-based network running on T3. "We think Sonet is the only way to run ATM," Stevens says. "It's such a good technology as far as resiliency goes. It gives two paths everywhere so the campus never goes down. With Sonet, we would no longer have to depend on the central office. If it blew up, we'd still function," Stevens says. Cray is planning to run ATM in the near future. And disaster recovery is no small thing on a sprawling campus, regardless of the applications. Stevens adds: "If some gardener goes on the property and digs a hole in the wrong place, you're in trouble. I know it sounds funny, but it's one of the challenges we have-especially being out in the boonies."}

_{Aside from gardener protection, Stevens wants Sonet to provide bandwidth enough for the future and autonomy from the central office. "Once there are really good video applications, we'll want to be able to run them," he says. "Most private networks will run out of steam with new multimedia apps." And though Stevens says it's not often that the central office goes down, it's catastrophic to the business if it does-enough so that Cray is willing to pay for its own Sonet network. "After the setup [costs] the service is in the $20,000-a-month range-but we spend that much now on the integration of video and voice and data services here with T3," he says.}

_{The Case for Costs}

_{Although there is no absolute migration path, for the perfect Sonet-network profile (see sidebar, page 62) there are some cost savings to be had. Take the cost of using a Sonet-vs.-T1 backbone network. On a per-megabit basis, the throughput is so much higher, you can save 20 to 30 percent over a private T1 or T3 line, according to both Ameritech and AT&T officials. Some service providers estimate even greater savings-up to 35 percent in some cases-but the majority seem to make more conservative predictions. And not only is the throughput higher, but the cost-per-circuit is less because the capacity is so much greater. As a result, the start-up costs become the qualifier. "Do you have to incur the critical cost of building a new infrastructure for fiber?" Hyde asks. "For a company that has a headquarters and two satellite campuses that are, say, 30 miles apart, which is a perfect Sonet profile in terms of functionality, the cost is high, potentially millions."}

_{Baylock agrees that the cost can be that high, but it is typically a few hundred thousand dollars. He also says to remember that distance is not always the determining factor. Right-of-way, where either a public entity or another private company owns the right of way that you need to cross to dig the trenches for the fiber, can be a major factor even if your sites are just a mile apart. Say there are two corporate sites both in the heart of the city of Chicago-you'd think it would be relatively cheap. But if those sites are separated by a highway, you can run up your Sonet bill by buying right-of-way.}

_{The bottom line is that as the market stands right now, Sonet may not be overkill for your network if it's an upgrade, not a rebuild, Baylock says. If you either have fiber laid, or if you're located in a major metropolitan area where fiber is plentiful, then to upgrade from a T3-type network can make sense, and as far as network technologies run, it doesn't require a huge capital investment.}

_{Communications Week, June 24, 1996}

_{Copyright (c) 1996 CMP Media Inc.}