Carrier Ethernet - Carrier Ethernet Technologies

Carrier Ethernet Technologies

The industry has made a concerted effort to resolve the limitations of Ethernet in the WAN described above, so as to allow the use of "native" Ethernet technologies by network providers. The key roles have been played by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.1 and 802.3 standards committees. IEEE 802.1 has addressed the scalability and management issues in the standards for Provider Bridges (802.1ad) and Provider Backbone Bridges (802.1ah). These standards allow for Ethernet networks of planetary scale. Associated standards (IEEE 802.1ag, and related ITU-T standard Y.1731) provide Operations and Maintenance (OAM) capabilities allowing connectivity verification, rapid recovery, and performance measurement. Current work on PBB-TE (802.1Qay: Provider Backbone Bridging-Traffic Engineering) is allowing such an Ethernet to be controlled by an external control or management application (for example, a network management application or a transport control plane such as GMPLS (IETF RFC 3945)), so as to allow the full range of traffic engineering policies and strategies to a network provider.

The IEEE 802.3 Working Group in close cooperation with the ITU have been working to simplify the transport of 40G and 100G technologies being developed by both bodies: 802.3 for LAN and ITU for the OTN. The OIF and the Ethernet Alliance have also been working cooperatively with their members to enable future enhancements to Ethernet for the WAN while looking to the future speed of Ethernet technologies and services.