Carrier ethernet really does seem recession-proof. All the pundits seem to agree that ethernet services were going up in 2009 and are expected to continue that way. What matters in difficult times is that ethernet is flexible, it reduces complexity, it offers high bandwith, it’s scaleable and a good choice for replacing ATM and frame relay. According to Current Analysis consultant Siow Meng Soh: "The demand is coming both from large enterprises as well as SMEs. And the vertical segments that the demand is coming from are primarily the GEMS - government, education, medical and services.”
Ethernet was promised by Nan Chen, President of the MetroEthernet Forum (MEF), as the "one universal language” linking the globe. Sure, it is everywhere, but is it really a global interconnect medium? Not yet, according to Siow Meng Soh, who said that ethernet access and metro applications continue to lead the market and are really taking off in the APAC region. Examples included Far EasTone in Taiwan, Globe Telecom in the Philippines, PT Telecom in Indonesia and StarHub in Singapore.
Until recently, the scope for international services was not so good. The potential wider reach of ethernet had been hampered by lack of interconnect consistency between providers. Ethernet’s very flexibility means a lot of parameters need to be aligned when any two providers link their services and the result works, but set-up and configuration is a lengthy ad hoc process.
What, then, has been the impact of the MEF’s ENNI (external network to network interface) initially launched in January? I found some answers at the NetEvents 2010 APAC Press Summit in Singapore, in a debate entitled Casting the Ethernet Wider. For a start, I wanted to know if the ENNI had been the milestone that was suggested, and Kevin Vachon, the MEF Chief Operating Officer, explained:
"It is key, but I don't see it as a critical milestone, there are numerous specifications that relate to Interconnect - class of service and OAM, these are all individual, there is not one single OAM specification in the world today.” He explained that January’s ENNI ratification was just Phase 1 and that there would be further functionality enhancements to come. "Some of those enhancements are related to how you tumble traffic through intermediary operators, for example. So there's going to be a progressive release of specifications for the next couple of years.”
One of the questions addressed early on in the debate was the choice between carrier ethernet and IP VPN. Why was ethernet apparently winning that battle? Frost and Sullivan’s Adeel Najam had one likely answer: "The key thing differentiating ethernet from IP VPN is that ethernet is self-managed.” It seems that enterprise customers want to control their IP routing, and that makes sense in large organisations running mission-critical services needing tight security and control. Adeel commented that ethernet is mostly used now where enterprises need huge throughput, but the number of sites is less.
Another key driver for ethernet uptake was the growing sophistication of business communications, the need for on-demand, flexible IT resources and leading-edge services such as software as a service, videoconferencing, unified communications, data centre services and the convergence of voice, video and data.
So much for the continuing rapid proliferation of islands of ethernet data. What about connecting them? Yes, Siow Meng Soh saw a growing number of cross-border international ethernet services, with international carriers coming into the region to provide global services. Most recently, Cable & Wireless announced their APAC ethernet portfolio in February. Other players include Global Crossing, NTT, Verizon, Tata Communication, SingTel and more. These big names bring big footprints, and thanks to the MEF’s Gloabl Interconnect program they can work together more easily or partner with small local carriers to deliver increasingly comprehensive coverage.
AT&T, for example, in the region started with only four markets - Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia. Now they have added Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand and Taiwan. At the end of the last year, Tata Communication also expanded its coverage in China through its local partner, China Enterprise Communications, CEC. The Chinese telcos are also moving abroad - China Uecomm expanded its VPLS service to the US providing a China to US point-to-point link, and China Telecom has partnered with TI Net to expand coverage across 70 POPs in Europe and 15 POPs elsewhere around the world.
There are different ways of working together. AT&T have POPs in major cities and then acquire local access circuits from local partners to reach customer premises. China Telecom, on the other hand, struck a wholesale arrangement with TI Net to expand its coverage in other continents. Whatever form of partnership is preferred, the role of the MEF’s Global Interconnect program is to standardise the business and technical parameters to make this interconnect a simple, straigtforward process in all but the most exceptional cases.
The expanding footprint offered by the large players is driving the need for access services. Having an international footprint means they want to sell their services to multinationals, and that is driving the demand for access services. The ENNI is already impacting the growth of partnerships. According to Kevin Vachon: "One of the pieces of work that is going to be strategic, which will shorten the time required for Interconnect, is standardisation of access services. Right now you can build an access service to MEF specifications in quite a number of different ways. But we're moving down that road to try to define exactly what an access services looks like, and to certify it as well.”
How far should the standardisation of contracts go? According to Marc Teichtahl, Uecomm’s Head of Engineering, standardisation still provides latitude to offer different classes of service. They already have a three class service model: "So you'll have standardised access, you'll have a standardised access service and then you'll have standardised class of service.” But then, he pointed out, there is still the problem of standard billing between the parts of the whole.
The debate explored a number of other topics, such as the popularity of VPLS service and the demand for speed - what was the market of 40/100Gig connectivity? But in terms of my original question, and the title of the debate, what was on the horizon for casting the ethernet wider? When would we see real acceleration of global connection as the specifications and interfaces began to be smoothed out? ENNI has been a long time coming since it was originally mooted in 2008; how long will we have to wait for further progress?
According to David White, Systems Engineering Manager, Brocade, the first phase of the ENNI took such a long time because of the very demand for it: so many new members were joing the MEF and wanting to get their oar into the specification that it held up the delivery. Now, however, we are past that initial hurdle and in a steady process of adding incremental functionality to that core. He did not feel that standards were actually slowing down delivery right now.
So, it was an interesting discussion, but more a report on work in progress than an answer to my basic question: when will ethernet become that universal business language?
*Lionel Snell, NetEvents