CircuitPath > Technology

SAIN’s Market

CircuitPath is focused on bringing SAIN technology to the marketplace as a simplifying architecture for the Global Internet. This can be accomplished by building on that which already exists.

The core network has progressed to a point that, at least in industrialized countries, there is a large amount of bulk optical fiber capacity available. This capacity needs to be applied to the emerging market for high traffic intensity applications including interactive multimedia, video broadcasting, and especially on-demand services such as video on demand. Even though capacity appears to be more than adequate, that is likely to change as the market for new high speed services expands and new capacity will be needed. Scalability and efficient use of bandwidth, two areas where SAIN has significant competitive advantages, will be critical market factors.

A large amount of the complexity of the current Internet rests on routing complexity that results from the current way that the global Internet depends on routing traffic through separate domains (sometimes called Autonomous Systems) where domains may often be operated by competing entities, or at least entities with competing objectives. The existing structure has resulted in debates about “net neutrality” where some are proposes that the problem be solved by legislation and regulation.

CircuitPath proposes an alternative logical structure for the Internet. It divides the network into two parts: EXchange Nodes (EX Nodes) and Distribution Networks (D-Nets). An EX node is a very high capacity switching exchange that has two purposes: 1) to pass traffic to and from itself and every other EX Node, and 2) to act as a transit node for traffic terminating on other EX Nodes. The primary purpose of each service provider is to act as a distribution network to its registered subscribers and to collect and distribute traffic to and from one or more EX Nodes. This structure allows for service providers to set up arrangements that bypass the EX nodes for traffic it collects and distributed to these other service providers, but it avoids the necessity for all service providers to support transit traffic that may not be in the providers competitive interest.

An EX node can be a logical entity that is geographically distributed and may not necessarily be owned by a single enterprise. The goal is to achieve not only physical diversity, but market diversity so that providing EX node service becomes a competitive market.

Distribution networks have so far emerged as a collection of many disparate parts without a common manageable architecture. This situation has contributed significantly to the complexity of the Internet. Different approaches for implementing access networks are based on using the telephone twisted pair plant (DSL and Dial-Up), on Cable Modems, on optical fiber (Metropolitan Area Networks), and on networks based on Wireless (both fixed and mobile). Each Access Network approach has assumed that it can interconnect to existing Backbone Networks as a sufficient way to provide service. This current practice works to a degree, but the resulting quality of service and the cost of managing Access Networks is not acceptable.

CircuitPath's SAIN (Synchronous Adaptive Infrastructure Network) architecture provides the "glue" in a simple manner that

- greatly improves quality of service and user satisfaction;

- greatly improves local access transmission efficiency;

- greatly improves manageability of the Internet at low cost.

SAIN can be packaged initially as a new competitive service. It can grow incrementally as more and more services are introduced into the Internet without fear of obsolescence of SAIN subsystem elements. The fact that distribution networks have evolved as mere appendages to backbone networks provides SAIN with a unique opportunity — to produce subsystems and components that grow together into an integrated whole.