The Metro Ethernet Forum announced this week that it has reached 100 members with the addition of Arris.

The group, which advocates Ethernet for carriers, says its membership has risen 50% in the last six months. Other companies to join the industry forum recently include Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.

The MEF defines carrier Ethernet as "a ubiquitous, standardized, carrier-class service defined by five attributes that distinguish Carrier Ethernet from familiar LAN based Ethernet."

These attributes are quality of service, scalability, service management, reliability and standardized services. Quality of service has to be there to support service-level agreements. The service has to be scalable enough so that millions can use it, for a range of uses, from business to entertainment, and from voice and video to data. Management has to be in place for rapid provisioning and monitoring the network. It has to be reliable, able to recover rapidly, as quickly as 50 milliseconds. And the standardized services include transparent, private line, virtual private line and LAN services.

Carrier Ethernet continues to be a hot area. The Metro Ethernet Forum quotes Infonetics Research as saying the metro Ethernet equipment market will grow $49 billion over the next five years.

The group itself is a non-profit organization, formed in 2001, whose goal is to accelerate adoption of carrier-class Ethernet around the world. Its members are mainly service providers, network equipment makers, semiconductor manufacturers and testing organizations. The group defined Carrier Ethernet in April 2005 and launched a certification program based on the definition. Today, there are 31 certified equipment manufacturers and 14 certified carriers.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.