Abstract

The migration of Ethernet technology from the Local Area Network (LAN) to metro networks, driven by increasing demand in Voice over IP (VoIP), data and video traffic, makes metro Ethernet service one of the most promising networking opportunities. However, due to lack of resiliency in native Ethernet features and the current economic condition, service providers are looking at deploying Ethernet services over their existing, proven and reliable SONET infrastructure with the new, emerging, data friendly, next-generation SONET technologies like Generic Framing Protocol (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) and Resilient Packet Ring (RPR). This paper discusses why these emerging technologies over SONET are attractive to provide metro Ethernet services, how these technologies can be used to deploy Ethernet and what services can be offered.

© 2005 Optical Society of America