Defining Ethernet in the MAN
 
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The Metro Ethernet Forum last week revealed it has reached several agreements at its October technical committee meeting.
Created earlier this year, the Metro Ethernet Forum already has 59 high-profile members, ranging from 3Com to Yipes. Its goal is to accelerate the adoption of optical Ethernet in metropolitan-area networks.
The group's work is still early yet. But it has developed a model for Ethernet " services " - that is, the definitions, profiles and templates are in place for the level of service that might be delivered through Ethernet in the MAN. This should help in drawing up service-level agreements between Ethernet MAN service providers and their customers, something that is difficult and nonstandard today.
The group also drew up a draft document for dealing with quality-of-service (QoS) issues in Ethernet. QoS has never been Ethernet's strong suit, but is widely hailed as something Ethernet will have to address as it moves out from the LAN.
The group also provided a model for recovering from link failures in less than 50 milliseconds and established a management subcommittee to look at managing the Ethernet interface between a service provider and a user.
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