“Carrier Ethernet is already widely deployed, but it is usually point-to-point or as an access line into an IP-VPN,” says Joel Stradling, senior analyst with Current Analysis. “Now we are seeing end-to-end multipoint Ethernet gain traction.”
Legacy technologies like ATM deliver a fixed bandwidth allocation which can be very constrictive to modern businesses. Ethernet, on the other hand, can be rapidly scaled up and down so that a company can go from 8 mbps to 100 mbps in the course of a month and back down again when demand drops. “With Ethernet you pay for what you use and not the upper limit of what you don’t use,” adds Stradling.
According to Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research: “Many-to-many E-LAN service will be the fastest growing part of carrier Ethernet because the economic advantages of Ethernet actually increase exponentially (as opposed to proportionally) in relation to the number of points connected.”
" The whole Ethernet services market is progressing rapidly, and to remain competitive, service providers do need to be looking at developing a wide portfolio of Ethernet services including any-to-any options,” adds Current Analysis’ Stradling. “Failing to address this area will give other players that are ahead of the curve the opportunity to differentiate themselves.” Both Vertical Systems Group and Ovum RHK estimate that carrier Ethernet services revenues will exceed $30 billion by 2012.
Carrier Ethernet has been plagued by a proliferation of terms which can confuse enterprise customers. Metro Ethernet, native LAN, GigE, Ethernet private line (EPL), Ethernet virtual private line (EVPL), Layer 2 virtual private network (VPN), Ethernet access, and virtual private LAN service (VPLS) are common terms used in service descriptions.
The IFPI estimates that, in 2006, 20 billion illegal files were shared on P2P networks, 20 times the number of legal music downloads. As a proportion of internet traffic, P2P has dominated HTTP traffic for the last four years.
Two categories of Ethernet
The Metro Ethernet Forum has specified two distinct categories of Ethernet services to clear up the confusion. E-Line encompasses private and virtual point-to-point connections, and can be seen as an evolution of dedicated leaded lines and ATM virtual circuits. E-LAN refers to private and virtual multipoint services. Both E-Line and E-LANs offer scalability, improved bandwidth management and the ability to support classes of service and VLAN tagging.Enterprises are being attracted to E-LAN as an IP-VPN alternative. Not only can hosts be dynamically connected and disconnected, E-LANs now support eight Classes of Services (CoS) making it ideal for prioritising delay-sensitive traffic such as VoIP and SAP over less sensitive email and Internet traffic.