The Intelligent Ethernet

Ethernet has dominated the enterprise local area network environment for the last several decades, and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Ethernet as a carrier service however is in its infancy, but is about to experience rapid growth. Infonetics Research forecasts carrier-based Ethernet services to grow to over $22B by 2009, up from $2.5B in 2004 (Figure 1). This is an opportunity that carriers will not want to miss out on. It provides one of the best opportunities to grow revenue at the same time that many of carrier’s traditional services are shrinking.

As carriers roll out Ethernet services and attempt to increase their Ethernet revenues, it is critical that they move from the early adopters into the mass market. Early Ethernet services are often best effort services and early adopters are willing to accept these services due to their increased bandwidth or lower cost per bit. However, to move Ethernet services into the mass market requires Ethernet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and service intelligence comparable to those found in traditional data services. According to Vertical Systems Group, 82% of Ethernet service purchasers are switching from a traditional data service such as frame relay, private line or ATM to Ethernet. Without an Ethernet SLA, many of these users will stick with their traditional services.

Early frame relay services were also offered un-managed, without SLAs and carriers quickly determined that in order to ensure profitability, these services needed to be managed, automated and that customers required SLAs. Ethernet is going through the same evolution with un-managed services being replaced by more intelligent services and with demarcation devices being deployed at the customer premises. Ethernet demarcation devices are necessary to enable remote management, SLA monitoring, and craft automation. They also enable advanced service capabilities such as customer network management and web portals for real time visibility and control of an end-users service. Recognizing this need the standards bodies are developing standards for link OAM (IEEE 802.3ah), service/connectivity OAM (IEEE 802.1ag/ITU Ethoam), Ethernet UNI (Metro Ethernet Forum - MEF) and for demarcation devices (IEEE 802.1aj).

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