The MPLS WG Archive

["dave o'leary" <doleary@juniper.net>]

At 09:33 PM 1/6/01 -0800, Manohar Ellanti wrote:
>Do you mean to say SPs such as large/national ISPs use ATMs on the backbone
>and have complete mesh with DS3/OC-3/OC-12 links and then allow routers etc
>connected to these ATMs switches  to have mesh connectivity as well between
>all POPs using sub-interfaces or different physical interfaces. I would
>think they use core routers to build the backbone rather than ATM switches.

ATM in the some of the larger backbones was common throughout the mid-late 
90's,
and still remains in some of the networks - but due to some of the reasons 
discussed
on this thread, many are planning to migrate to routers/LSRs interconnected 
with
SONET/SDH links and no ATM switches (or encapsulation), using MPLS to
more or less replicate the traffic engineering capabilities of ATM between 
routers -
I believe this is where this thread started, right?

                                                 dave