Long Haul Ethernet: Performance Doesn’t Come Cheap
March 16, 2011
Carriers around the world are deploying a growing array of long-haul Ethernet services, offering implementations of Ethernet over an alphabet soup of transport technologies, including SDH/SONET (EoSDH), MPLS (EoMPLS), and DWDM (EoDWDM) networks. While all of these implementations allow customers to connect via a simple Ethernet interface, the differences in the underlying transport networks affect both the cost structures and quality of service guarantees that carriers can provide.
Service providers delivering Ethernet over SDH/SONET can offer features sought by many financial organizations, such as guaranteed latency and restoration times, and specific routing and restoration paths, that are not available over MPLS. However, data from TeleGeography’s Ethernet Pricing Service reveal that these guarantees come at a price: on key routes surveyed by TeleGeography, 100 Mbps EoSDH services cost an average of 50% more than EoMPLS services. While EoSDH cost more than EoMPLS on all routes surveyed by TeleGeography, the premium was particularly steep in the U.S., where a 100 Mbps Ethernet service between Miami and New York delivered over SDH/SONET cost more than twice as much as EoMPLS.
EoSDH and EoMPLS Prices on Key Routes, Q1 2011
Source: TeleGeography
TeleGeography’s Ethernet Pricing Service benchmarks the price of long-haul Ethernet service for large enterprises. The service provides detailed Ethernet pricing data by carrier, by port capacity, and by presentation on over 60 key routes.
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