Metro Ethernet - deploying the extended campus using Ethernet technology

Ethernet has been one of the most influential technologies for local area networks (LANs) and is now getting ready for deployment in metropolitan and wide area networks. Activities in the standard bodies reflect the new role of Ethernet - often referred to as "metro or WAN Ethernet ". ITU, IEEE and IETF are all working on solutions that not only expand the reach of Ethernet, but also enable new, innovative services. Starting with a brief look at the driving forces for metro Ethernet this paper will identify four canonical services for Ethernet MAN/WAN and discuss related deployment issues of the different service options. Topics such as security, routing protocol effects and multicast distribution, QoS, and layer-2 inter-working was discussed in the context of point-to-point and multipoint Ethernet services. The paper concludes with a look at redundancy and loop avoidance for large layer-2 provider networks - including a discussion of the current approaches in VPLS as well as new proposals, which lead to a generic solution for redundancy in large layer-2 provider networks.