Carrier Ethernet forecast: A mixture of sun and clouds

CEN Feature (Aug 26 2010) Cloud

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   With the ultimate end-game of cloud computing coming closer on its horizon, Carrier Ethernet got off to a great start this year when the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) ratified Phase 1 of the External Network to Network Interface (ENNI) and approved MEF 7.1 for the Element Management System-Network Management System (EMS-NMS). This week, from the crow’s nests of several industry analysts’ ships, we’ll take a look at some of the other ways the technology has advanced in 2010 and where it is headed next.

   The arrival of the ENNI has been a tremendous blessing to carriers and customers looking for more options and flexibility. But of course, as more networks interconnect there is increasing need to manage and monitor the traffic they are transporting. And as more and more carriers convert their existing infrastructures to support VPLS, they need better visibility into their Ethernet networks, said Brian Washburn, analyst, Current Analysis. Layer 2 alone just won’t do.

   “It’s not just about offering managed network service, it’s about carriers being able to monitor traffic, put it into an enterprise portal, and tell customers, ‘Here’s your usage, peak operating traffic and latency,’ ” he explained, adding that CPE that supports this type of visibility is on its way to market.

   To achieve their goal of combining VPLS and MPLS backbones onto an IP core and providing Ethernet services over a single converged infrastructure, carriers also will need to be able to efficiently aggregate and groom traffic so it can be loaded onto huge routers with high-speed optical interfaces, he noted.

   Joan Engebretson wrote earlier this week in Carrier Ethernet News about Vertical Systems’ recent report that enterprise customers are now buying Ethernet connections at speeds as high as 10 Gb/s.  Waiting in the wings, and perhaps arriving in 2010 or the first half of 2011, is 100 Gb/s Ethernet, said Washburn. While 100 Gb/s might seem a bit extreme today, it will be a must in the future when connecting huge data centers to one another in Carrier Ethernet-based cloud computing applications.

   In addition to the above, 2010  also has been a good year for improvements in Carrier Ethernet standards for end-to-end Operation, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAM&P), said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. “Unlike QoS, end-to-end OAM&P demands standardization, because all the devices in the path need to participate.” Thanks to the hard work that’s gone into creating and implementing those standards, “OAM&P, more than anything else [excluding cost], is responsible for enterprises’ increased willingness to trust Ethernet pipes as opposed to SONET pipes.”

   With these pieces falling into place, carriers can begin to increase their focus on the future. Another help to carriers looking ahead is the emergence data center Ethernet standards, Nolle added. To provide private cloud computing, data center back up, or overflow infrastructure as a service, data center and service provider networks must support the same standards, he explained.

   All of this progress on standards work is important because it helps to foster reliable Carrier Ethernet networks. “Cloud computing really just means you are connecting up a whole lot of very, very large data centers. And what you can’t do when you do that, is have failures,” said Eve Griliches, managing partner, ACG Research. Data center applications do not run alike or at the same time of day, so carriers will need more bandwidth, more flexibility and solid networks that can ebb and flow a little more than they could in the past, she explained.

   “It’s going to be less and less about connectivity and managing IP bandwidth,” said Griliches, adding, “The biggest issues are going to be reliability and security.”

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