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Standards body breaks new ground as Nortel announces members of its PBT gang…
For the first time a bunch of Carrier Ethernet service providers have had their products certified for their service quality and performance, as opposed to just their correct functionality. Some 37 such services from 11 carriers - AT&T, COLT, Embarq, Neon, NTL Telewest, Optimum Lightpath, RCN, Swisscom, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and VSNL International – have now been found by conformance test house Iometrix to be compliant with the Metro Ethernet Forum’s ‘MEF 14 Certification: Abstract Test Suite for Traffic Management’. According to the MEF the implication for enterprise users is that they can have confidence that MEF 14-certified Carrier Ethernet services can support the most stringent real time communications applications, including voice over IP (VoIP) and HD quality videoconferencing.
“These results confirm that Carrier Ethernet is ready for prime time,” comments MEF president Nan Chen. “These were real world test scenarios, the national network tests ran coast-to-coast, the international ones spanned the globe using real enterprise networks. Their performance was within SONET/SDH standards for key multimedia indicators like delay and jitter, confirming Carrier Ethernet's suitability for mission critical applications while reducing capital and operating expenses.”
President and founder of Iometrix Bob Mandeville also notes that this certification was also the first and only to test one way traffic metrics - critical for ensuring successful converged network applications.
And in other news of Carrier Ethernet’s expanding remit, Nortel has announced a Carrier Ethernet ‘ecosystem’ based on the Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) flavour of the technology that the Canadian company has pioneered. The new members of Nortel’s PBT Carrier Ethernet gang are ANDA Networks, Axerra Networks, Extreme Networks, Hammerhead Systems, Lightstorm Networks, Meriton Networks, RAD Data Communications and Soapstone Networks.
As is acknowledged by Nortel the selection of the company’s PBT-powered Carrier Ethernet technology for use in BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) project has given PBT some cachet in the next generation network business. It’s also reported that Bell Canada and Verizon are tracking PBT developments.
PBT’s main rival is Carrier Ethernet based on Transport-MultiProtocol Label Switching (T-MPLS). This has been worked on by companies such as Alcatel, Huawei and Tellabs, and is further along the standardisation trail than PBT.
John Williamson
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