The cost of simplicity
Simplicity of routing a historical necessity
- No digital equipment/computers in 1890 - only “switches”
But requires
- reliability in every component
- logically fully-connected core
Can we build an alternative that has same features as the telephone network, but is cheaper because it uses more sophisticated routing?
- Yes: that is one of the motivations for ATM networks
- But economics says that 80% of cost is in the local loop!
- Moreover, many of the software systems assume topology
- too expensive to change them