ng a shared common core provides a fungible capacity pool to handle traffic peaks for all services on a single network. In addition, a single pool of capacity is more future proof, from an investment standpoint. If there were two or more core networks, there is always the risk that core A capacity augment investment is misdirected when the demand growth later appears on core B instead of core A, thus stranding that augment investment. The second way a service provider's network differs from data center networks is footprint. Service provider network buildings typically number in the several thousand across a large geo- graphic area, whereas Web 2.0 data center networks number in the tens to hundreds. This is by design, SO as to shorten the reach to the customer, whether by wireline or wireless access. It is the nature of the traffic and the large edge footprint that drives the design and implementa- tion of packet edge platforms today, and their evolution tomorrow. 12.3 TRADITIONAL EDGE PLATFORMS 12.3.1 VERTICALLY INTEGRATED EDGE PLATFORMS For the past two decades, edge platforms have been a vertically integrated combination of a chassis, silicon (packet processing, fabric switch, CPUs), and software. The network operator had limited visibility into the inner workings of any particular platform (aka blackbox or opaque). Instead, Network Edge equipment users and suppliers coalesced around an open standards model (IETF, IEEE, etc.) where the behavior of the platform was functionally described SO that equipment could interoperate between service providers and between different equipment suppliers. While the open standard model did work and enabled delivery of many sophisticated packet services to meet the ever-growing customer needs, it had three major issues. The first issue was time-to-market. It generally took a long time for multiple competing ecosystem players to first con- verge on a new standard and then it took even longer for multiple ecosystem suppliers to consistently implement the standard on multiple ve