What is Carrier Ethernet?

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"Evolution of Ethernet to a Carrier Class Technology" Featuring Bob Metcalfe, Inventor of Ethernet.  The fascinating story of Ethernet - where it came from and where its going now narrated by the man who created it back in 1973.

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• The MEF has defined Carrier Ethernet as a ubiquitous, standardized, carrier-class Service and Network defined by five attributes that distinguish Carrier Ethernet from familiar LAN based Ethernet
• It brings the compelling business benefit of the Ethernet cost model to achieve significant savings
• It's enabling new distributed applications for Enterprises and accelerating deployment

• For Service Providers

  • It's a set of certified network elements that connect to transport Carrier Ethernet services for all users, locally & worldwide
  • Carrier Ethernet services are carried over physical Ethernet networks and other legacy transport technologies
• Service providers worldwide are migrating their existing networks to deliver Carrier Ethernet services to Enterprises, businesses & residential end-users

Standardized Services

• E-Line, E-LAN provide transparent, private line, virtual private line and LAN services
• A ubiquitous service providing globally & locally via standardized equipment
• Requires no changes to customer LAN equipment or networks and accommodates existing network connectivity such as, time-sensitive, TDM traffic and signaling
• Ideally suited to converged voice, video & data networks
• Wide choice and granularity of bandwidth and quality of service options

Scalability

• The ability for millions to use a network service that is ideal for the widest variety of business, information, communications and entertainment applications with voice, video and data
• Spans Access & Metro to National & Global Services over a wide variety of physical infrastructures implemented by a wide range of Service Providers
• Scalability of bandwidth from 1Mbps to 10Gbps and beyond, in granular increments

Reliability

• The ability for the network to detect & recover from incidents without impacting users
• Meeting the most demanding quality and availability requirements
• Rapid recovery time when problems do occur, as low as 50ms

Quality of Service

• Wide choice and granularity of bandwidth and quality of service options
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that deliver end-to-end performance matching the requirements for voice, video and data over converged business and residential networks
• Provisioning via SLAs that provide end-to-end performance based on CIR, frame loss, delay and delay variation characteristics

Service Management

• The ability to monitor, diagnose and centrally manage the network, using standards-based vendor independent implementations
• Carrier-class OAM
• Rapid service provisioning