AT&T announced Monday that it has lit its coast-to-coast IP/MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) network, which delivers speeds of up to 40-Gigabit on the backbone network.
The company said the network is the first of its kind and doesn't need multiplexing capability on its 50,000 wavelength miles. The network connects major U.S. cities and includes 18,000 miles of optical ultra-long- haul routes that eventually will be able to carry customer voice and data traffic at speeds of up to 100 Gbps.
AT&T competitors Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications are also building and enhancing 40 Gbps networks.
"As the demand for Internet and IP-based applications continues to explode, IP traffic on the AT&T network has doubled throughout the past two years," said John Stankey, group president of Telecom Operations at AT&T, in a statement. "We fully expect this substantial growth to continue in the future."
AT&T noted that the new nationwide backbone carries a variety of IP-based services ranging from wireless data and business video to data and voice services as well as private line and wavelength traffic. The network also services IP-based residential services and provides Web access for the company' 13.8 million DSL and AT&T U-verse customers.
The network upgrade was provided by Cisco's Carrier Routing System (CRS-1), which also will support future upgrades "for years to come," AT&T stated. The configuration has been designed to support system capacity up to 92 Terabits per second during continuous system operation.
On an average business day the IP/MPLS network carries more than 13.4 petabytes of data traffic, AT&T said. That translates to more than 2.1 megabytes for every human on earth while providing 99.99% reliability.
-David Gardner
Information Week
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