Legacy TDM	Statically provisioned circuits SONET/SDH limit of 16 nodes Multiple layers of equipment for IP services
Meshed Ethernet	Spanning tree protocol (STP) limits protection response to minutes Limited number of nodes QoS applied at every hop
Ethernet Rings	Limited and proprietary protection schemes Limited number of nodes Packets are processed at each hop No high-priority transit path

Table 2. Comparing RPR to Other Solutions