SONET self-healing networks

Recent disasters have stimulated both customer demand for survivable services and Southwestern Bell Telephone (SWBT) planning efforts to provide increased network survivability. Southwestern Bell Telephone´s architectural assessment of the requirements for SONET (synchronous optical network) self-healing networks is discussed. This assessment compares the various survivable network architecture alternatives for both interoffice and loop applications and their advantages/disadvantages. Factors affecting architecture choices include extent of survivability, automatic vs. manual restoration, restoration time requirements, flexibility to rearrange vs. cost, interconnection of multiple rings, and interconnection of loop and interoffice self-healing networks