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[IP-Optical] RE: Optical link bundling. Was Re: Draft Minutes FromPittsburgh

  • From: Grenville Armitage <gja@research.bell-labs.com>
  • Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 11:53:09 -0700
  • CC: ip-optical@lists.bell-labs.com, mpls@UU.NET
  • Organization: Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies


aside from the usual caveats of taking analogies too far...

Sanjeev Rampal wrote:
> 
> Even if we only care about IP clients,  other issues (stemming from
> the fact that ATM switches can peer into per-packet (cell)
> headers,

_ATM_ switches do not look inside packet headers (regardless
of what ATM-packet hybrids you might have seen), and packets are
not cells. Looking inside cell headers? Well, that's the point
isn't it...

> do merge operations etc)

In the early days of MPLS, ATM switches couldn't all be relied
upon to support VC merge either. The analogy to optical switches
(despite the loud stretching sounds) is somewhat germane.

cheers,
gja