Carrier Ethernet - a welcome tonic for global business

Metro Ethernet Forum celebrates ten years that will shape business communications for decades to come

In today's uncertain economic climate it takes courage to predict good news in any sector, but industry analysts such as Infonetics and Ovum are sticking to their predictions for strong growth in Carrier Ethernet services and equipment - a $20 billion market set to grow to between $40 billion to $50  billion by 2014. Impressive - but still just a ripple on the greater global economy.

The real significance of this growth lies in its effect on world business. If ever a tonic was needed, it is now, and Carrier Ethernet services are providing business with that tonic - in terms of lower cost, more flexible and yet more powerful communications, and expanding business opportunities across nations, continents and the world.

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In today's uncertain economic climate it takes courage to predict good news in any sector, but industry analysts such as Infonetics and Ovum are sticking to their predictions for strong growth in Carrier Ethernet services and equipment - a $20 billion market set to grow to between $40 billion to $50  billion by 2014. Impressive - but still just a ripple on the greater global economy.

The real significance of this growth lies in its effect on world business. If ever a tonic was needed, it is now, and Carrier Ethernet services are providing business with that tonic - in terms of lower cost, more flexible and yet more powerful communications, and expanding business opportunities across nations, continents and the world.

Ethernet - the background

Ethernet was among the success stories of the twentieth century - a simple, best effort, networking technology invented by Bob Metcalfe for the Xerox Palo Alto laboratories in 1972. It was challenged by other more sophisticated protocols such as Token Ring but, by the end of the century, Ethernet had become the de facto standard for the LAN. It had beaten off the opposition by being simple, cost effective and by continually evolving to run at higher speeds on lower cost media.

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Metro Ethernet Forum celebrates 10 years of key network accomplishments

The history of Metro Ethernet 

But, as a best effort solution, Ethernet remained in the LAN where the site's network administrators could manage any traffic contention issues. You could not let that happen on a WAN handling massive amounts of traffic from many different sources, so wide-area networks relied on more complex and costly technologies such as SONET/SDH, ATM or Frame Relay. If Ethernet was to break out of the office and become a WAN technology it would have to evolve significantly.

In 2002 an industry alliance called the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) was formed to promote Ethernet in the WAN. The forum recognized the need for five key attributes if Ethernet was to have a chance against the established legacy WAN technologies. These were:

• Standardized services.

• Scalability - in terms of bandwidth, reach (from access to global services), and number of users and services supported.

• Reliability - restoration capability to support traditional TDM traffic, and data flows tailored to a switched circuit network.

• Quality of Service options allowing SLAs up to multimedia standards.

• Services management to carrier-class OAM using standards-based vendor independent implementations.

Specifications were written defining this new "Carrier Ethernet" and the MEF started promoting it as a simpler, more cost-effective solution with the added benefit of being based on widely understood Ethernet, requiring less specialist training.

Carrier Ethernet benefits

From a business user's perspective, the MEF's most significant step was to launch a certification program, firstly for Carrier Ethernet equipment in 2005 and then for Carrier Ethernet services in 2006. Now users could be confident that the services would meet well-defined global standards, and sales began to soar. 2008 saw a severe economic downturn, but Carrier Ethernet remained resilient, offering just the sort of cost savings, business flexibility and new growth opportunities that were most needed in difficult times.