Carrier Ethernet

[Qacer]

Can someone makes some sense of this for me please?

Regarding Carrier Ethernet, this is what was written in one article:

The driving force behind this expansion is understandable: Ethernet has become a de-
facto lower-layer network technology on LANs. Traditionally Ethernet frames were
re-packaged into some other format for wide area transmission, only to be
reassembled as Ethernet at the destination. So why not have Ethernet everywhere, and
not only within LANs?

This comment was made in general and not necessarily applying towards a certain category of Carrier Ethernet. There are two categories: Carrier Ethernet as a service and Carrier Ethernet as a transport technology.

My question regarding the quote is that other articles have mentioned that Carrier Ethernet can be provided over other transport technologies such as SONET, MPLS, etc.

Doesn't providing Ethernet over a transport technology other than native Ethernet defeat the purpose of not re-packaging Ethernet frames into another format?

Thanks!

 

[Mark R]

I think the point is that Carrier Ethernet is supposed to be an abstracted version of the actual transport technology.

So, while internally CEaS may work by re-framing and re-transmitting ethernet frames of MPLS, which is essentially the same as old methods of ethernet transport - the difference is in how the service is provided to the customer. Previously the customer would obtain the transmission line and the appropriate routing hardware. With CE, the customer obtains an ethernet port at each end - the actual method of getting frames from one end to the other, is left to the provider.

 

[Qacer]

After reading some additional articles, I came to the conclusion that some articles forget to mention that the conversion loss aspect is only applicable when Carrier Ethernet is referred to the actual Ethernet transport technology and not necessarily the service offering.