Carrier ethernet transport
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[edit] Carrier Ethernet Transport (CET)
Carrier Ethernet Transport (CET) is an architectural approach for building scalable transport infrastructure for supporting Ethernet and the evolution to next-generation networks. CET integrates intelligent WDM (ability to switch at the wavelength and sub-wavelength levels) and Ethernet tunnel technologies such as Provider Backbone Bridging – Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) or Transport MPLS (T-MPLS). CET combines the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of native Ethernet with the reliability and power of WDM to deliver unparalleled flexibility, efficiency and cost savings — particularly for interconnecting Gigabit Ethernet.
Why are telecommunications carriers interested in Carrier Ethernet Transport?
As carriers migrate to next-generation networks (NGNs) to reduce their costs and improve their ability to support high bandwidth-intensive services with guaranteed SLAs, they need a flexible, scalable optical transport infrastructure – especially in the metro network – that efficiently supports Ethernet and minimizes operational complexities.
Carrier Ethernet Transport delivers the following networking capabilities:
• To address the growth in endpoints driving GigEs to increasingly disparate destinations, the capability to switch traffic, end-to-end, across the entire network . CET embeds key any-port-to-any port switching capabilities at the following levels: Wavelength Switching, Sub-wavelength (typically Gig E) Switching, and Carrier Ethernet Tunnel Switching
• Separation of the service delivery architecture from the underlying transport architecture. By doing so, the transport network is transparent for service creation and modification (e.g. adds, moves and changes)
• Reliable, deterministic, end-to-end connections that can support guaranteed SLAs
• Optimized hand-off of Ethernet traffic so there is less “hairpinning” of traffic to layer 2 switches and the resulting unnecessary consumption of ports on these switches
See Also:
• Lightwave article on Carrier Ethernet Transport ([1])
• Provider Backbone Bridging Transport ([2])
• Meriton Carrier Ethernet Transport White Paper ([3])
• Carrier Ethernet Transport ([4])
