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Carrier Ethernet grows up

Tuesday 23 September 2008, Carrier Ethernet World Congress, Berlin

CARRIER ETHERNET GROWS UP AND SCALES UP
By Mark Lum

Welcome to my Carrier Ethernet daily diary from the 1st day of the MEF’s World congress here in a damp and rainy Berlin! We’re here to understand more about the market, meet colleagues from around the world, and debate the further evolution and growth of Carrier Ethernet services, networks and applications. A somewhat abridged diary due to my chairman’s duties today, I’ll have a more considered diary tomorrow.

Today is all about scalability with a Carrier Ethernet switch/router market worth over $5bn, according to IDC. As MEF founding president Nan Chen presented in his opening address, the technical and operational foundations of Carrier Ethernet have been put in place over the past four years and the MEF is now making progress in more complex areas such as E-NNI and security, and opening up new applications such as mobile backhaul and wholesale access interconnect services.

The heat of the technology and protocol wars fought over the past couple of years seems to have dissipated. But can victory be declared or is this just a lull in activities while the various factions regroup armed with new standards? What are carriers really looking for? Speak it softly, but I understand that even SDH may not be as dead as many here assume.

MPLS simplification is the technology theme, in order to provide an effective packet transport network. With the mutation of T-MPLS to MPLS-TP - and formal RFCs expected in 12-18 months’ time - and ongoing standardisation of PBB-TE, the overt technology wars have definitely abated since last year’s CEWC. I suspect many are waiting to see how the MPLS-TP work will meet the operational needs of carriers. In the meantime, PBB-TE focused vendors will not stop their marketing efforts, so I expect another interesting year ahead as the path towards Connection-Oriented Ethernet continues to be mapped out. I also expect a lively 9-vendor panel debate, covering the complete spectrum of Carrier Ethernet technologies.

Once again EANTC has produced another must-see Carrier Ethernet interoperability showcase. Larger than ever, 28 vendors have worked to set up a fully interworked test network comprising over 110 different products with over 330 separate test items. Once again, the focus is on multi-vendor VPLS/MPLS, PBB-TE and T-MPLS metro domains with an IP/MPLS core domain, demonstrating the technical interworking possibilities. Microwave backhaul equipment is a notable growth area at the interop and I’m sure I’ll return to this important topic later in the week!

Read more of the CEWC Daily Digest, Day One >

Posted by Pauline Rigby on September 23, 2008 10:35 PM | Permalink