The year's 5 hottest telecom topics and editor's picks

Any media outlet that's worth a click has to know what its audience wants. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fans aren't knocked out by The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and Bravo fashionistas stifle yawns behind their white gloves during SmackDown.

Telecom has its fan-favorites, too. The results are in on the top 5 runaway hit topics for SearchTelecom.com loyalists in 2008. You voted with your page views for network-insider topics like BGP and MPLS, showed serious concern about flexible service provisioning, optics and wireless broadband.

On the very slim chance that you missed some of this year's best, we gathered essential links in your favorite topic areas that deserve another look.

MPLS

You simply can't talk about telecom without finding your way to multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). No matter what our experts wrote, you jumped on it, especially when it addressed how to engineer for quality of service (QoS) and increased security. Here are the articles we think you can't live without:

• MPLS QoS: Implementing the best model for guaranteed service
• MPLS and Carrier Ethernet: Playing together to ensure quality of service
• IP QoS: Two generations of class-of-service tools
• Avoiding private IP security risks in public IP networks

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

BGP -- what's not to love? Your interest in all things BGP bordered on obsessive, and rightly so. It's the core routing protocol of the Internet that designate...

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RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary dense wavelength division multiplexing  (SearchTelecom.com) optical fiber  (SearchTelecom.com) passive optical network  (SearchTelecom.com) ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer)  (SearchTelecom.com)

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s network reachability among autonomous systems (AS). Without knowing your way around this complex protocol, you're nowhere. So if you missed these, start clicking -- because BGP changes are coming fast.

• 5 essential reasons for BGP in your network
• Scale your backbone with core MPLS, BGP on the edge
• BGP Autonomous Systems transition: The 10 biggest concerns
• Designing large-scale BGP networks

Telecom service provisioning

The ability to provision telecom services quickly is core to next-generation networking, and learning how to make money from IP networks is crucial, particularly as "revenue per bit" pricing plummets. It's about open networks, flexible platforms, partnerships and improved service management.

• Podcast: Next-generation service provider platforms: What do service providers need?
• Five steps to a next-gen network transformation plan
• Building revenue-increasing telecom services for the future
• 3 recession survival steps for telecom service providers
• Telecom business model transformation requires symbiotic service models

Optical networking

Optics everywhere, even in access networks, help deliver the coming flood of video and high-bandwidth applications. Our experts zeroed in on the opportunities and challenges optics present in different parts of the network, and what's in the future as packet optical presents itself as a SONET/SDH alternative.

• Network modernization in an optically dominated era
• PON evolution presents provider planning choices
• Packet optical: Differing views on network elements

Broadband wireless

The positioning surrounding massive adoption of broadband wireless is driving industry optimism, even during a severe recession. While industry hype has everyone jumping straight into 4G, the reality is that we're in the era of 3G and need to focus on profits there first. And while consumer adoption is the main focus of service providers, there's a growing emphasis on enterprise broadband wireless sales efforts and formulas to help providers figure out the potential business spend.

• While LTE and WiMax hype builds, era of 3G still just beginning
• Three ways for telecoms to jump-start 3G profits
• Enterprise wireless: Calculating business spending limits