The Illustrated Network

Foreword

Network consolidation has been an industry trend since the turn of the century. Reducing capital investment by converging data, voice, video, virtual private networks (VPNs), and other services onto a single shared infrastructure is financially attractive; but the larger benefit is in not having to maintain and operate multiple, service-specific infrastructures. Fundamental to network consolidation—supporting a diverse set of services with a single infrastructure—is a common encapsulating protocol that accommodates different service transport requirements. The Internet protocol (IP) is that protocol.

Everything Over IP

Things move fast in the networking industry; technologies can go from cutting edge to obsolete in a decade or less ...