Metro GE

Metro GE

Optical Ethernet
The volume of data traffic continues to grow at a significant rate, especially enterprise traffic based on Ethernet---both within the enterprise and across metro areas. Many enterprise Ethernet backbones are GE now and they are beginning to migrate to 10GE implementations. It is notable that as the data volume increases in the enterprise and large capacity becomes available in long-haul networks, the metro area can seem to be a barrier to large scale data flows, as indicated in the following illustration, which presents traffic growth and the relative capacity of enterprise LANs, metro transit, and long haul:

Provisioning Services Over Lightpaths
One way to address this issue is to provision GE and 10GE services over fiber links in the metro area. However, this approach would not scale well. It would lead to fiber exhaust and introduce various provisioning and management complexities. A better approach would be to base such services on lightpaths, for multiple reasons, as noted below. A key resource consists of integrated network intelligence that optimally manages lightpaths.

Back to top.

About iCAIR Mission & Projects Announcements
& Events Corporate & Research Partners Advanced Internet Initiatives Other URLs Home