Excuse Me, What is the Time (Solution)?
Today my colleague, Tord Haulin, and I participated in a Packet Synchronization seminar arranged by Chronos and its partners, primarily U.S.-based Symmetricom. Being players in the timing distribution world, they have spent a few years now preserving synchronization during the packet migration for mobile backhaul. So what are they saying, and what response did they get from the Swedish operators? Here are a few of my reflections:
- Synchronous Ethernet and PTP are the standards gaining a lot of momentum, and all players are eagerly putting support for these on to their products. (Yes, Xelerated is one of them.)
- There is no need to bet on which of these technologies will actually will become most popular. As some of the big fives in Europe have backed Synchronous Ethernet, it is likely it will find its way to the market. One of the comments at the break was that BT is planning to use Synchronous Ethernet in Open Reach, the UK model for local loop undbundling. If this is the case, all major vendors must support it. And PTP is already in trials with a number of operators.
- PTP v2/2008 is likely to be rolled out in trials with limited on-path support. I see this as an interim solution, while waiting for switch and router vendors to support PTP in hardware. At that point, not too far away, the technology has the scale and reach to depend upon for synchronization services.
- Operators are actively looking for a solution that allows them to can their TDM synchronization services. The pace of adoption will vary widely of course. Expect alternate providers to pave the way.
- Time stamping in hardware is being asked for not only for synchronization services, but also for performance monitoring. I will revisit this area, but as a general point, it is obvious for anyone that router and switch vendors have been getting away with limited capabilities in this area. Integrated probe functionalities have been more of a tick in the box, and haven’t propelled up to the show stopper level in the technical evaluation processes. This is about to change.
There was a good mix of people at the seminar – some representing the vendor side and an equal share from the larger Swedish operators. Notably most of them haven’t been focusing on synchronization for the last ten years, but are now actively getting their heads around the strategies for years to come. Packet technologists and TDM architects are now coming together. And in a few years, we will know the outcome.
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