Chapter 5. Global Service Provider Design Study

Globenet is a fictitious international service provider with 77 points of presence (POPs) all around the globenamely, in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand. Network density varies from country to country. Globenet's network expansion strategy consists of building presence in more than 60 countries while limiting the number of POPs in each country (with some exceptions, such as in the U.S.).

For customers that require a large number of connections spread over many locations in a specific country, Globenet relies on interconnection with regional service providers and establishes tight agreements with them to provide seamless service. Recently, Globenet also started deploying virtual POPs (VPOPs) in some countries. The main concept behind VPOPs relies on the co-location of some of the routers in regional service providers' premises. Such VPOPs are then connected to the Globenet core network by means of a guaranteed bandwidth service across the regional service provider network. This effectively allows Globenet to establish a POP in a particular country without extending its own core network to reach the corresponding parts of the world.

Note

A regional service provider may be either a national telco (such as Telecom Kingland, discussed in Chapter 4, "National Telco Design Study") or a service provider having deployed a dense network in a particular region of the world.

Typically the profile of Globenet's customer base is medium-to-large international enterprises with sites in multiple countries and a requirement to rely on a unique service provider for their telecommunications services rather than dealing with a plethora of national and international carriers. Furthermore, for such enterprises, the cost of international leased lines is still very significant (although more affordable than a few years ago, at least in some regions). Therefore, purchasing the necessary international capacity to build a private network is typically a costly proposition, leaving aside the complexity of having to deal with a large set of regional connectivity providers.

Globenet's network is made up of a broad range of links that differ significantly in terms of speed and technology in various regions.

This chapter's objective is to discuss the current Globenet network design that illustrates an international service provider with respect to the set of objectives and network characteristics of such networks. In particular, this chapter details the following key design aspects: