Carrier Ethernet 2 Aims For Global Connectivity

alphadogg provides this extract from Network World: "The Metro Ethernet Forum has updated its Carrier Ethernet specification, hoping to standardize the use of Ethernet for global multicarrier services. 'With Carrier Ethernet 2, we're expanding Quality-of-Service [QoS] well beyond best efforts, and will now allow carriers to interconnect to provide worldwide [Ethernet] service,' said Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, during a Metro Ethernet Forum Web conference held Thursday to announce the specification. The forum introduced Carrier Ethernet in 2005 as a set of extensions that describe how data communications carriers should use Ethernet in a consistent manner. The new specification, Carrier Ethernet 2, establishes an additional set of rules."

This should be good...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Cause, even numbered Ethernet standards don't suck.

Sweet Jesus

[squidflakes]

The possibility that I could get something like a 10Mb metro ethernet line to my house for the same price I'm paying for shitass DSL makes me shiver in delight.

Of course, this means that it won't happen until the entrenched telcos figure out a way to oversell it by 50% and charge you like it was a T1 from the mid-90s.

Re:

[uncledrax]

Um.. if they weren't overselling, they wouldn't need QoS or 'best effort'.. the whole point of Ethernet here is it's bursty in nature, so you can actually get a better over-sub rate if you manage your network correctly.

Re:

[uncledrax]

My thinking is pretty much what Wiki cites [wikipedia.org] it as "Overselling or Overbooking refers to the selling of a volatile good or service in excess of actual capacity. Overselling is a common practice in the travel and lodging industry. In telecommunications, sometimes the term oversubscription is preferred."... There may be a more specific usage of the term I'm not familiar with.

SLAs and BE can cover/handle congestion situations (possibly covered by Oversubscribed services being all used at once).. they are more of

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[parlancex]

If I want QoS and I need to prioritize traffic I could do it on my own router if there was no "overselling" (I think you mean oversubscribing). Different types of traffic have different priorities to different customers.

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[Zondar]

You can only absolutely control traffic that you send, so you're only winning half the battle there... You can attempt to *influence* the inbound traffic by doing things like throttling TCP and adjusting windows, but you can't use the same mechanisms on UDP traffic.

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[sociocapitalist]

It's not possible to have bandwidth in the core equal to or exceeding (in order to guarantee no congestion) bandwidth at the edge - especially if we started talking about FTTH with speeds of 10, 100 or conceivably 1000Mbps at some near point in the future.

Business realities aside, you still have to allow for peer to peer which will consume any available bandwidth if you don't choke it down at the access layer.

I recently built an ISP core in a western European country who is trying to have enough bandwidth i

Re:Sweet Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't about "last mile" edge connectivity, it's about replacing SONET backhaul links with Ethernet, partly because it's cheaper, and partly because Ethernet these days packs a lot more bits onto into relatively cheap copper than a single SONET link manages even on single-mode fiber.

It's also a lot about Bob Metcalfe. You ever watch a show called Royal Pains? There's a character who introduces himself to everyone, no matter how unrelated to a business transacton, with his full name and title, "Evan R. Lawson, CFO of HankMed". The inventor of Ethernet, Bob "I invented Ethernet" Metcalfe, who invented Ethernet is kind of like that. Did I mentioned he invented Ethernet? He will.

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[jon3k]

I always like the idea of standardizing on Ethernet, because it allows people to move from small LAN administration far more easily. Reducing the different types of skills required to run ISPs increases the talent pool which is good for everyone.

Re:Sweet Jesus

[uncledrax]

Yes and No. There's a world of difference between the world of basic or unmanaged switches you'd find on a LAN, and the world of Carrier-grade MPLS-TE or PBB-TE. The good is if you're a really GOOD small LAN admin, you at least understand the unpinnings concepts of Ethernet switching and hopefully some basic routing.. ...but Elvis help you if you go from a little 3Com switch and a Linksys Router into 'big iron' routing....

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[jon3k]

Yeah I should be more specific. I mean actual trained LAN administrators. In the days of SONET/ATM/Frame-Relay a CCNA was absolutely lost when you stepped into the world of long haul transport. But with Metro-E a lot of that knowledge becomes directly applicable. Sure you might not know what G-PON is or an add drop mutliplexer, but at least an gigabit ethernet interface runs at 1Gb and has speed and duplex settings!

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[uncledrax]

Ahh gotcha. Yes. Assuming you know/are-smart-enough-to be CCNA type work on a regular basis, ya, you'd do fine.
I'd personally argue the world would be a better place if everyone didn't know what x-PON was.. but I realize there's alot of legacy infrastructure that needs to be supported and companies are unable/unwilling to goto regular Ethernet (or 'Active Ethernet' if you go by the MEF speak.. which.. is just silly of a title.. i'm not talking 'Active Ethernet PtP' because that's just retarded. put a switch

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[ZeroSumHappiness]

Just dropping in to say that I have a jumbo jet that gets 200 miles per gallon. It also includes a jacuzzi in the back, not that I use it.

Bandwidth cap, cost per GB over that cap, location and provider, please?

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[zoom-ping]

No bandwidth cap, no throttling, same speed 24/7. The provider is local branch of TeliaSonera, Elion [elion.ee]. Sorry, they don't have English version of the page for some reason.

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[MightyYar]

Because it's in Estonia?

Re:

[MightyYar]

Probably :)

But in all seriousness I can't comment without knowing the subsidy structure of the two countries.

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[Jarik C-Bol]

that, and seeing as estonia has an area of around 45,226 square kilometers, vs the US with 9,629,091 square kilometers, that means(despite the huge difference in GDP, (5k per person in estonia, 35k per person in the US) the actual amount of work and cost involved in bringing fast internet to the entire country is fractions of what it is in the US. we can thank http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/ [nationsencyclopedia.com] for this information.

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[GNious]

Don't think anybody said that this connection was available across all of Estonia.
If he lives in Tallinn, or one of the other larger cities, it is as densely or less densely populated as most cities around the planet, so the ability to provide internet there for a given price and at a given service-level should be equal to that of most ofter cities.

Basically, you should at least be able to get the same product for the same price, in London, Washington and other large cities, particular if cost is proportion

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[rthille]

I'm currently on the wrong side of town (about a mile away), but my ISP (sonic.net) is offering gigabit fiber with 2 unlimited phone lines for $69.95/month. 100MBit & 1 line is $39.95.

I'm wondering if I should wait for it to get here, or move :-)

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[Belial6]

While I don't have any complaints about Sonic, they have been rolling this out for 3 or 4 years, and still are only supplying to customers in a very small area. I would love to switch back to Sonic with a gigabit connection, but won't be holding my breath waiting for it to reach across town. It may be another decade before they cover the city, if they ever do.

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[Charliemopps]

Oversell it by 50%? You're kidding right? It's considered good policy to oversell by 60% or so. The problem is ISPs are overselling by between 200%-800% as standard now, with some extreme cases where entire small towns are fed by a single 5mb trunk while they are selling 8mb+ DSL/cable. Not only will the entire thing be swamped the second ANYONE downloads a large file, no-one is able to reach the speed they were sold unless they are connecting to someone else in the same town.

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[CyprusBlue113]

Hate to break it to you, but those aren't extreme cases. I've personally set up sites with 2 T1 backhaul that sold 6mb DSL.

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[jon3k]

WiMax was stillborn. LTE (and eventually LTE-Advanced) has already won.

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[unixisc]

Are there any carriers or ISPs that offer WiMax? I'd think that ISPs who wanted to offer wireless internet services w/o becoming mobile carriers might consider this an option. If they could leverage the current WiFi chipsets in most devices, and support IPv6, the standard could successfully escalate as well.

Also, this Carrier Ethernet standard - is it an extension of 802.3, or something else?

about time...

[uncledrax]

I'm glad the rest of the world is finally catching up to the wonders of IP and Ethernet... it's not rocket science

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe leads in Metro-E deployments, but the rest of work (LATAM and portion of APAC) are still TDM-focused. Of course a majority of the Metro-E rides OC-n transports in most cases anyway.

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[sociocapitalist]

I'm sorry but what in the world are you talking about (pun intended)?

Competitive Advantage

[sociocapitalist]

This should be a subsidized and open (ie not locked to one provider) solution countrywide just to help America try and keep up with the infrastructure in developing countries.

Get ready for...

[hlavac]

global broadcast storms! Yay!

Re:

[uncledrax]

.. um.. segment your broadcast domains? or at least don't trust your edges... kthx.