carrier ethernet defined
Carrier Ethernet for Service Providers
- 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
Carrier Ethernet for the Business Users
The MEF has defined Carrier Ethernet as a ubiquitous, standardized, carrier-class Service and Network defined by five attributes that distinguish it from familiar LAN based Ethernet
Five Network Attributes
- Standardized Services: Carrier Ethernet initially only provided point-to-point and multipoint-multipoint services for transparent private line, VPL & LAN services. This offering has been enhanced by adding new service types like e-Tree too. These offer ubiquitous global & local service via standardized equipment requiring no change to the customer’s LAN and existing connectivity. The services are ideal for converged voice, video & data networks and offer choice and granularity of bandwidth & QoS options. The services provided are therefore well-defined, globally recognized standard services.
- The second attribute is Reliability: Ethernet has traditionally been known as the best effort technology. Today’s Carrier Ethernet can detect & recover rapidly from incidents, as low as 50ms recovery without impacting users. It meets the most demanding quality and availability needs for critical business applications.
- Next is the Scalability: Carrier Ethernet provides for granular bandwidth from 1Mbps to 10Gbps and beyond. Carrier Ethernet spans Access, Metro, National & Global services over a variety of infrastructures, service providers & MSOs. These services become ubiquitous so that millions can use a service that is ideal for the widest range of business, communications & entertainment applications with voice, video and data.
- Extremely important is Quality of Service: with as wide a choice and granularity of QoS options as of bandwidth options. The MEF has defined standards that allow Service Level Agreements (SLAs) matching the needs of voice, video & data over converged business & residential networks, because the MEF has set exacting standards for such characteristics as CIR, frame loss, delay & delay variation.
- Service Management: What has been defined is carrier class OAM, with the ability to monitor, diagnose & centrally manage, via standards-based vendor independent implementations. This means rapid service provisioning. As a result Carrier Ethernet’s service management facility helps Service Providers to maintain and accelerate their service provisioning to new customers as well as updating existing services.
