AT&T CTO: Throw Moore's Law out, rethink networks

Telecom carriers must fundamentally rethink how networks are designed to keep up with runaway bandwidth demand, AT&T's chief technology officer said Wednesday during a panel discussion on the first morning of the SuperCOMM trade show. Though AT&T's work in upgrading its backbone network in 2008 were "unprecedented," future increases in demand will eventually outpace carriers' ability to keep up, said John Donavan, AT&T's CTO. "The capacity we carried in 2008 will be a rounding error five years out," he said. "Our 2-[gigabit-per-second] backbone lasted seven years. Our 10-gig lasted five. Our 40-gig will last three. You get to 100 gig, what's that - 18 months? At 400 gig, I think routers melt. The finance [department] likes liquid assets, but I don't think that's what they have in mind."