Page 258 - Optical Switching And Networking Handbook

11_200023_CH10/Bates 1/17/01 9:06 AM Page 243

The Future of Optical Networking (Where Is It All Heading?) 243

of existing applications. In Figure 10-5, telephone-to-telephone over
the Internet was being offered as the mainstay for the carriers.
What carrier would ignore the benefit of gaining 11- to 13-fold
more calls across the existing set of circuits that are already
installed? As a matter of fact, the TCP/IP protocol stack was vigor-
ously attacked and modified to support this new application of the
real-time protocols (RTPs), as shown in Figure 10-6 with the intro-
duction of the upper layer protocols to support real-time applications
like VoIP and video over IP.
However, more problems emerged with the demand for real-time
video, streaming video, and interactive multimedia. The network
just could not sustain the demand and the rapid onslaught.
For example, the growth in volume for Internet users has been phe-
nomenal, as shown in Figure 10-7. This growth showed us that the
circuit-switching world was becoming passe and that packet
switching would be more efficient for our voice, data, and video
applications.

Terminal
Figure 10-5 Server
Telephone-to-
telephone across
the Internet using
VoIP Modem Pool
Server

CO Router

Internet

Terminal Modem Pool
Server
Router

CO
Server