Different Metro Ethernet services include various concepts which are covered in terms of data in the metro. Concepts such as the forms in which an Ethernet service can take shape, for example “retail” or traditional private line services and “wholesale” where a carrier may sell a large transport pipe to many smaller service providers.
In both of these scenarios many different customers will be sharing the same Metro Ethernet equipment and infrastructure. Even so this is not an issue as each client is issued with an isolated circuit, so traffic is not all bundled up together. This service is the business of selling transport pipes in which the customer receives a well defined SLA, and this is dictated by circuit they purchase.
If switching or packet multiplexing is applied as in the case of Ethernet Transport, EOS, and RPR, things become slightly different. Different customer packets will be “multiplexed” in the same pipe, which means they share the same bandwidth. There is nothing physical which divides one customer’ service from another, in other words no hard boundaries. The only boundaries which exist are logical and this means traffic is separated by means of “packet queuing” this ensures QoS and definition for multiple services.
The service provider knows how to define and identify one customers’ traffic from another, when the network or pipe is shared and they are also able to identify as well as enforce the service which a particular customer has purchased. Specific bandwidth is allocated per the customers’ package and they are able to “transparently” move traffic for a specific customer between different locations. Scaling the number of customers is also important, as is deploying a VPN service for any-to-any connectivity.
Ethernet itself is the most widely used form of LAN or Local Area Network technology. It was originally developed from a system known as Alohanet from the Palo Alto Research Center, which was further developed by Xerox, Intel and DEC. Typically this kind of network makes use of coaxial cables which are made up from pair of twisted wires. The most commonly used are 10BASE-T which provides up to10Mbps transmission speeds.
We also find Fast Ethernet which is known as 100BASE-T where we are looking at speed of 100 Mbps, a 1000Mbps speed is not unknown, and this provides and incredibly high level of support to the LAN. We also find Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet also.
It was named by one of the developers, a certain Robert Metcalfe, and it was name such because of the light-transmitting “ether” which was supposedly the way light traveled, or pervaded the Universe. By the same token the cabling or “ether” is also able to carry information throughout an entire network which could be considered to be its own little universe.
It is has become a very standard protocol to use for the purposes of communication, and believe it or not Robert Metcalfe invented this in 1973. Because Digital, Intel and Xerox were responsible for developing the first working models, the first standard model for Ethernet was known as “DIX” and it was this hard wired LAN which came into world-wide use. Now you have a little background on Metro Ethernet Service.
By: Bill Rothschild