state of some Internet data centers have caused many enterprises to rethink their strategies. Deferral of packet voice and MPLS It has been an axiom in our business that everything is moving to IP, including voice. Although there has certainly been more progress in the past year, the widely anticipated shift to packet voice is not apparent in the networks of the major carriers. In fact, the whole premise of multiservices networking seems to be given lip service only. Where are the MPLS networks that we were expecting to be carrying multiservices traffic by now? Again, the vendors have developed the tools, but the service providers have not yet seized the opportunity to offer next-generation services. Areas where innovation appears to be taking hold: metro service providers Although many segments in the service provider industry have been experiencing difficulties, new metropolitan carriers are blazing a new path with breakthrough technologies and innovative pricing. They are building remarkable optical IP Internet infrastructures within key metropolitan areas domestically and internationally. By offering virtually unlimited, unmetered metro area communications at a fixed price, these revolutionaries are eliminating the bandwidth barrier. One provider offers 100 Mbps of nonoversubscribed Internet access for a flat $1,000 per month. This makes access to the Internet and metropolitan service seem like simple extensions to a LAN. Others offer high-speed, low-cost interchange between last-mile providers and the Internet. Advances and Opportunities in Next-Generation SONET 1.3.1 Our Assumptions The assumptions behind this investigation can be summarized as follows: New architectural models are emerging and need to be considered by car- riers. There may be advantages in these new models and technologies. These architectures include GbE/10-GbE-based backbones (optical Ether- net) using VLAN techniques, SONET and next-generation SONET (where SONET supports native Ethernet interfaces to the user to achieve cost sav- ings o