Whitepaper
BRINGING CARRIER-GRADE ETHERNET
TO METRO NETWORKS
Ethernet has become the prevalent and ubiquitous link-layer
technology in the LAN and today more than 95% of all IP traffic
originates and terminates in the Ethernet format. Because of Ethernet’s
ubiquity, simplicity, cost effectiveness, and scaleability there is
significant customer demand for Ethernet access and connectivity in
the metropolitan network—and service providers are scrambling to
capitalize on this opportunity.
A recent study by Lehman Brothers/McKinsey Research estimates that
high-speed Ethernet “should become the principal access protocol for
enterprise networks in the next five years and account for 60 percent
of total bandwidth due to its low cost structure and familiarity in
enterprise environments.”
While the value of Ethernet metro connectivity for enterprise
customers lies in the familiarity of the protocol and the lower interface
and IT administration costs compared to traditional WAN access
technologies such as ATM, Frame Relay, or SONET/SDH, the appeal
for the established service provider is in the transport efficiency, cost
effectiveness, and bandwidth scaleability.
Unlike Frame Relay or ATM, Ethernet is proven to scale to 10 Gbps
and beyond, and established service providers can sell bandwidth in
increments from as little as 1 Mbps to 100 Mbps—without truck rolls
and without having to change the physical interface to the customer.
They can take advantage of enterprise demands for Ethernet and offer
flexible services. Once the service is deployed, providers can easily
offer new service and scale bandwidth remotely from the Network
Operations Center (NOC).
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Next-generation Optical Ethernet solutions are required that bring the
reliability and availability that until now has been missing from
Ethernet products. Optical Ethernet services will simplify networking,
reduce capital expenditures, and trim down operational costs. They
will allow carriers to create new high-value services that make it easier
for enterprise networks to gain metro access, and allow providers to
deliver the reliability, availability, and service levels demanded by
enterprise customers.
Current Roadblocks to Metro Ethernet Deployment
With any new technology, the way must be paved to allow rapid
marketplace adoption. The best way for Ethernet to be adopted is to
identify the best fit for it within the mainstream transport operational
models of established providers. Unfortunately, Ethernet is still often
perceived as being a best effort protocol suited only for the LAN
because current implementations lack the basic transport-layer
qualities and capabilities that carriers are accustomed to from
SONET/SDH today, including:
• Reliability
• Availability
• Fast protection and restoration
• Performance monitoring
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) statistics gathering
• Fault detection and signaling
• Look-and-fit within the SONET/SDH operations model
In short, current implementations lack the carrier-grade attributes Equipment Reliability and Availability
needed to allow them to rapidly rollout new services with confidence. With Ethernet equipment migrating to the carrier’s Central Office,
What is missing from today’s first-generation Ethernet platforms are equipment reliability, uptime, and fault tolerance become significantly
carrier-grade Operations, Administration, Maintenance, and more important than in the LAN. Carriers require five nine’s
Provisioning (OAM&P) capabilities. OAM&P is important for service (99.999%) availability for the services they offer, which translates to
providers to detect performance degradation or outright faults on less than 6 minutes of unscheduled downtime per year. To meet this
services end-to-end, to recover service rapidly after a service goal, carriers require:
degradation or fault occurs, and to isolate defects along the service.
• No single point of failure in network equipment
While the SONET/SDH equipment that is deployed by service providers
today has been standardized with OAM&P from the ground-up, • That all system components are hot-swappable
Ethernet as an enterprise LAN technology never had to have these • Equipment Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of at
features because the entire network was owned and operated by the least 50,000 hours
same company and was geographically limited within a building. • In-service software upgrades without impacting service
First-generation Optical Ethernet service solutions have been based • Automated software download and configuration updates
either on enterprise-class switches that lack these basic OAM&P
capabilities or they have been based on next-generation SONET/SDH • System software-level verification and re-write
platforms that can map data protocols such as Ethernet or ATM onto Carrier-grade certifications like Telcordia’s NEBS-3, consisting of GR-63,
SONET STS-1 and/or VT1.5 circuits. Although Ethernet switch-based GR-78, and GR1089, make sure that equipment has been designed
services have become popular in many countries due the capability to with carrier-grade physical, power, and electromagnetic interference
provide broad bandwidth at low cost, “Ether-LECs” have run into specifications in mind and fulfills Central Office safety standards.
problems from an operations and maintenance point-of-view since Without these certifications, established providers will not deploy
switch-based networks do not provide the tools to detect defects, Optical Ethernet equipment in their networks.
isolate these defects, and recover services. Next-generation SONET/SDH
platforms with built-in Ethernet mapping and switch capabilities fit
much better into the carrier operational model due to the
SONET/SDH heritage. However, they inherit the cost structure of
SONET/SDH without providing a clear Ethernet transport and service
demarcation toward the customer.
Defining the Requirements for Carrier-Grade
Optical Ethernet
Second-generation carrier-grade Optical Ethernet equipment needs to
address the above shortcomings of Ethernet while maintaining the
cost and many other major advantages of Ethernet. The historical
limitations to metro Ethernet deployment that established operators
must overcome are:

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 OAM&P
Ethernet as its stands lacks carrier-grade OAM&P features because
they were not deemed essential when the enterprise controlled the
entire network. In the event of a failure within the enterprise
environment, a technician could go to the wiring closet to diagnose
the problem, sift through packet logs of each switch, and use link
testers to isolate failures. Even if the failure were in a remote location,
IT staff was available at the remote location since the enterprise owned
the end-to-end infrastructure. However, minimizing operating costs and
truck rolls are critical to a profitable service offering so robust OAM&P
is therefore a strict requirement for a next-generation carrier-grade
Ethernet offering. This requires:
• A well-defined transport and service demarcation point
to the customer
• Transmission quality monitoring per-link and end-to-end
• Forward and reverse fault sectionalization and propagation
• Performance reporting with settable thresholds
• Local and remote alarming
• Facilities and terminal loopbacks for isolating faults when
troubleshooting connections to the customer
• A secure embedded communications channel for single-ended
maintenance and provisioning of customer equipment that does
not interfere with the customer traffic and cannot be hijacked for
denial-of-service attacks
• Open systems interfaces to provisioning applications
Service Level Monitoring and Verification
To introduce profitable new services in a scaleable way that minimizes
the risk inherent in solving the who will buy and when question,
metro providers need a simplified solution that collects useful statistics
on both transport-level link quality as well as packet throughput
without overwhelming the operation center with statistical overload.
A carrier-grade solution should collect all such statistics for each client
and each network interface in 15-minute and 24-hour bins. Performance
monitoring systems can then poll the summarized statistics to insure
service levels are being met. Providers can proactively report problems
back to the customer if a managed device at the customer location is
handing off poor-quality statistics, and they can also offer the
customer a larger bandwidth service if the customer frequently
approaches the bandwidth capacity of the existing connection.
Network Management and Operational Support System
(OSS) Integration
Now more than ever, network management is the lifeblood of any
successful carrier. No matter how technically attractive a service may
be, if it is not effectively managed it will not be widely deployed. In
today's multi-vendor environment, it is imperative that the heterogonous
set of network elements that comprise an end-to-end service are
managed and monitored from a common management solution.

Carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions

from Internet Photonics simplify networking
and allow metro providers to introduce
new revenue-enhancing services at minimal
risk. They can be deployed to augment
existing SONET/SDH infrastructure without
disruption or as a complete network
solution for end-to-end service delivery.

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The management of new network elements must integrate with the
current OSS infrastructure deployed at a carrier's Network Operations
Center (NOC). Carriers want to train their NOC personnel on a
standard operational model that can be extended across services, thus
minimizing training cost and deployment effort. There are several OSS
integration models deployed today by established service providers.
Some require that the integration point be through the Element
Management System (EMS) through a CORBA interface, while others
prefer to communicate directly with network elements via TL1 or
SNMP. In either case, the equipment vendor must support standard
interfaces and be willing to work with the carrier to incorporate their
platforms into the NOC infrastructure. Depending on the carrier, the
overarching OSS solution may be:
• Homegrown
• From a single vendor
• Based on several third-party software applications
For example, Telcordia's OSS solutions are prevalent among
incumbent carriers. The integration with Telcordia’s OSS infrastructure
requires full compliance to the Operations Systems Modifications for
the Integration of Network Elements (OSMINE) process. This is a
costly endeavor for any equipment vendor but a must-have
equipment requirement for metro providers deploying carrier-grade
Optical Ethernet.
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Delivering Carrier-Grade Optical Ethernet Solutions Today
While Ethernet has become the ubiquitous and compelling
networking technology for the corporate LAN, until now it has been
missing the OAM&P capabilities required for deployment in metro
networks. Most established carriers that have already deployed
Ethernet have therefore been limited to deploying Ethernet-over-
SONET/SDH rather than being able to take advantage of the lower
cost and simplicity of native Ethernet services. The complexity and cost
have constrained the offering and uptake of such services to date. The
widespread success of Optical Ethernet services hinges on the
availability of best-of-breed solutions that at last bring carrier-grade
capabilities to Optical Ethernet so that it can be deployed within the
mainstream operational models of established service providers.
Internet Photonics understands the complex issues involved in
addressing the above requirements and is the first to architect
next-generation product solutions that allow providers to deliver
carrier-grade Optical Ethernet services today that seamlessly fit into
their mainstream operational models. Internet Photonics is delivering
carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions with a compelling economic
model that allows established service providers to tactically deploy
equipment where there is customer demand. This minimizes capital
expenditures deployment risks while bringing the advanced performance
monitoring, management, and fault isolation features of SONET/SDH
to Ethernet without the complexity and cost (see the White Paper:
Solving First Mile Metro Access Challenges with Optical Ethernet).
Internet Photonics adds its unique Mainstream Operational
Adaptation capability that brings to Optical Ethernet the same
operational parameters as those found in SONET/SDH. It offers the
same look-and-feel of the carrier-grade features of SONET/SDH so
that Optical Ethernet can fit within the methods and procedures
currently utilized by mainstream operations staffs within established
providers. With these carrier-grade capabilities, Ethernet is finally ready
to move from the LAN to the WAN.
Standardizing Ethernet OAM&P
Carrier-grade Optical Ethernet products from Internet Photonics utilize
unused space between Ethernet packets to insert OAM&P overhead
for performance monitoring, embedded signaling, and secure
embedded communications without ever touching, processing, or
modifying data packets. This embedded overhead has a similar
function and is similar in character to the transport overhead of
SONET framing, which also is independent and separate from the
data payload. No link bandwidth is used for this additional functionality.
These solutions also support VirtualWire capability that transparently
passes every packet received on an ingress port including 8B10B
configuration codes without MAC-layer termination or modification
and with minimum latency and minimum latency variation. An
important implication of this VirtualWire capability is that it allows
Optical Ethernet transport services to be offered by regulated
telephone companies that are not allowed to handle packet
operations directly. The packet-level processing all takes place at the
upper layers outside of the transport service domain and is completely
transparent to the base service. Yet the customer interface wall jack to
the transport service can be the low-cost, standardized Ethernet
interface that enterprise customers already know and like.
Internet Photonics is the leader in providing OAM&P for native
Ethernet. All of the product interfaces are fully IEEE 802.3 standards-
compliant and can be upgraded as standards are finalized. Several
standards organizations and industry consortia are currently in the
process of standardizing Ethernet OAM&P, including the IEEE 802.3 as
part of the Ethernet in the First Mile Task Force, the ITU, the Metro
Ethernet Forum (MEF), and the IETF. Several proposals are currently
on the table, and equipment from Internet Photonics will be
upgradeable in their firmware to the new standards as they crystallize.
Internet Photonics and Delivering Carrier-Grade Optical Ethernet Today are trademarks of Internet Photonics. Other
trademarks are the properties of their respective companies.
CG-WP-0302
Best-of-Breed Solutions from Internet Photonics
Carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions from Internet Photonics
simplify network deployment, streamline service provisioning, and
offer dramatic size, footprint, power consumption, cost, and capacity
advantages over current solutions. Providers can established managed
demarcation points so they can proactively manage network services
and ensure compliance with measurable SLAs. These best-of-breed
platforms can be deployed alongside the existing and revenue
producing SONET/SDH optical infrastructure without carriers having to
replace, upgrade, or change existing equipment. Internet Photonics
offers standards-based solutions and is a contributing member of the
10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance, the Metro Ethernet Forum, and the IEEE
802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile working group.
Internet Photonics delivers the equipment uptime and fault tolerance
needed for carrier-grade Optical Ethernet equipment and offers the
full-featured OAM&P support and OSS integration that is essential
for successful service delivery and management. Next-generation
platforms from Internet Photonics meet or exceed all the
requirements for delivering Optical Ethernet services with 99.999
percent availability and they simplify networking while removing much
of the cost and complexity.
Carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions from Internet Photonics allow
metro providers to more effectively manage risks and deploy new
high-bandwidth services with minimal upfront and ongoing
investments. They bring the reliability and availability that until now
has been missing from Ethernet solutions. The deployment of carrier-
grade Optical Ethernet solutions from Internet Photonics allow carriers
to generate new revenues, improve margins, and capture market share
as they rollout high-value services. For more information, please visit
www.internetphotonics.com for product information, application
solutions, and white papers that shed light on the many advantages of
carrier-grade Optical Ethernet solutions from Internet Photonics.
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