a and industry who continuously develop core technologies. One view of the value chain has core technology as a key ingredient in hardware, software, and equipment. Services simply cannot exist without the latter. And the best of equipment, software, and systems wouldn't be the best without key core technologies. One only has to look at the real world to see that it is continually changing and evolving on a natural pace. What may seem chaotic and unpredict- able on the surface teems with structure underneath. Countless examples, such as time division multiplexing (TDM) or plesiochro- nous digital hierarchy (PDH), synchronous optical network/syn- chronous digital hierarchy (SONET/SDH) followed by Internet protocol (IP)/SONET/SDH evolved over many years. It's not diffi- cult to get into that loop and with only a few simple web searches find out that the next generation of equipment and systems are now deeply embattled in pushing standards development in the general form of next generation multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). The Internet camp calls it generalized MPLS (GMPLS); the ITU side calls it automatic switched optical network. Another example in the same area is resilient packet ring technology maturing as the next generation of optical ring transmission technology under the sponsorship of IEEE 802.17. To illustrate the characteristics of the nature of how technology evolves into services, economics, and timing, one only has to put a few numbers together to see how this field plays out. Figure 14-1 shows this in graphic terms. It's not difficult to see that sometimes core technology development and evolving standards run for 3 to 5 years before any tangible level of hardware and software start to take hold and mature. And only PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS Network Elemtents Technology (Products) Network Services IP Controlled GMPLS Optical Switching GigE Protocol On Local Exchange Ring Access Disparate Traffic Management Internet Program Transmission Wireless Access GOS 