Comparative assessment of network architectures for transporting packet and TDM traffic

Advancement of communication technologies and business patterns has contributed to the increase of consumer demand and machine-to-machine network traffic. Following this, a steep downward trend in revenue per bit and a slower decay in cost per bit transported is being observed. This poses serious challenge for network operators to correctly choose the technologies and architecture for transporting both packet and legacy TDM traffic. Thus, future expansion of the network should exploit the architecture that results in the most cost-effective transport of both packet and TDM traffic, aiming to keep TCO at its lowest while ensuring traffic meets its designated SLAs. In this paper we address metro, regional and long haul networks with varying traffic patterns (both packet and TDM) looking at the fundamental problems in network scalability and point to some solutions to ensure that cost-effective network traffic scaling can continue to enable future communications services.