metro Ethernet

Nortel Shakeup Prompts Questions

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:00:02 -0500

Yesterday, November 10th, Nortel announced a 'shakeup of sorts' after disappointing quarterly results, prompting a decentralization and large structure change at the company. These sweeping changes are resounding throughout not only the enterprise telephony industry, but other Nortel influenced markets including Carrier-Grade Systems and Metro Ethernet as well. In addition, the highly-visible John Roese, the present CTO of Nortel will be leaving in January 2009. This decision comes as a response to the company's decision to vertically align and integrate its business structure.

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Nortel carrier Ethernet up for sale: Here's an interesting potential buyer

Cisco Subnet — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:08:20 -0400

As Light Reading's Ray Le Maistre noted earlier this week, China-based Huawei should step in to buy Nortel's carrier Ethernet and optical assets - especially now it's up for sale. Nortel's MEN business is worth $2 billion and could be a sizeable addition to Huawei's $12.5 billion business. However, Nortel says this is not a "fire sale" and that it is "looking to get the most value as this asset is worth."

As we know, competition is good, and a leaner and more focused Nortel could make it a better alternative to Cisco, while the addition of a $2 billion Metro Ethernet business could help to kick start Huawei's carrier business in North America.

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How Huawei could be a better contender against Cisco

Cisco Subnet — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:46:41 -0400

Huawei should buy Nortel's carrier Ethernet and optical assets to help improve its competiveness against Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia Siemens, writes Ray Le Maistre, international news editor at Light Reading. Despite growing steadily each year to become a $12.5 billion business, the China-based company is still far behind its networking rivals, Le Maistre adds. Huawei's acquisition of Nortel's MEN (metro Ethernet networks) business would enable it to break into the North American market; enable the two companies to rekindle their failed access equipment relationship; give Huawei access to Nortel's advanced developments in 40G/100G; and would boost both companies' carrier Ethernet ambitions.

Le Maistre adds:

"This is a move that makes total sense for Huawei. Expect to see the Chinese vendor at least check out the potential for such a deal, which could, of course, run into some regulatory barriers and, of course, some potential competition that won't be keen to see Huawei get its hands on Nortel's MEN."

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What is WAN (Metro) Ethernet?

BandwidthSeek.Net — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:43:37 -0400

Metro Ethernet is the use of telco carrier-supported Ethernet technology in metropolitan area networks (MANs) or Wide Area Networks (WANs) vs. using Ethernet technology for just a Local Area Network (LAN), the most widely used application for the Ethernet protocol. Because it is typically a collective endeavor with numerous financial contributors, Metro Ethernet offers cost-effectiveness, reliability, scalability and bandwidth management superior to most proprietary networks. Metro Ethernet can connect businesses LANs and individual end users to a WAN or to the Internet. Corporations, academic institutions and government agencies in large cities can use Metro Ethernet to connect branch campuses or offices to an intranet.

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Finally some Market Sizing data on regional Managed Services markets worldwide

srivatsand — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:44:42 -0400

NetNet: Finally some actual data http://www.ciscowebtools.com/sp/newsletters/05-2008/ovum_ms_webinar.html Detail: In the process of studying some oportunities for startups in the 66 billion managed services market of network management area which went from software-as-a-service to network-as-a-service fuelled by the whole software-is-the-new-hardware virtualization concept, I uncovered this live webcast on detailed regional market sizing scheduled to be conducted by Peter Hall from Ovum Research. Looks like these folks have been at this for a while and are planning on holding four live sessions cover each of the geographies of the world. Check it out --> http://www.ciscowebtools.com/sp/newsletters/05-2008/ovum_ms_webinar.html

So What Do I Choose?

joseph-chapman — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:02:52 -0500

Considering the number of different options and the features that they may support, the Metro Ethernet service options you have could be quite large.
Fortunately, most providers don't really want to offer you a too many options since it typically means more maintenance for them. However, this doesn't mean that we can't consider what they might be and how we might use them.

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Service Transparency

joseph-chapman — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:09:39 -0500

Services as far as the eye can see...

If you were to look at all the potential options that could be conceiveably be supported within the world that is Metro Ethernet, it would make your head swim.

Last blog entry I mentioned that there are roughly two categories for ME services; point-to-point and multipoint. I also wrote that point-to-point Ethernet Virtual Connections (EVCs) can be used to provide a replacement for Frame Relay service. And most WAN connections are typically terminated with some type of routed interface.

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