Abstract

As of 2005, most, if not all vendors of optical access products, next-generation SONET ADMs and broadband crossConnects have incorporated some form of Virtual Concatenation (VC) into their product offerings. However, some vendors have chosen to implement Higher-Order (HO-VC) Virtual Concatenation (STS-1 and STS-3c payloads) while others have selected Lower-Order (LO-VC) Virtual Concatenation (VT1.5s) and some vendors even do both. Service providers that wish to use Virtual Concatenation to deploy Ethernet services must decide between implementing the more granular LO-VC versus the easier to manage HO-VC. This decision of which type of VC to use could be made universally across the network, or it could vary depending on interface type, topology and delivered Ethernet service. Complicating this decision is the impact of the VC Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS) and the addition of highly granular policing and shaping capabilities and Ethernet bandwidth sharing protocols such as VLANs and MPLS.

© 2005 Optical Society of America