Mobile broadband and 4G services are expected to significantly drive growth in data traffic over the next five years. This growth will require the overhaul of access and backhaul networks in order to support the data demand. While access technologies such as long term evolution and Wi-Max are increasing data rates on the access network, Carrier Ethernet is the preferred choice of technology for mobile backhaul. In addition, Carrier Ethernet services are rapidly expanding to include everything from enterprise and cloud connectivity, TV, video streaming, video-on-demand, gaming, business backup, enterprise resource planning and voice/video telephony. Estimates forecast that the global revenue from these services will exceed $40 billion by 2014.
All categories of service providers are committed to Carrier Ethernet as the ubiquitous standard for network connectivity as these services are cost effective and more scalable as compared to traditional dedicated pipes. However, networks must be carefully sized to maximise investments while delivering agreed-to service levels that ensure a superior customer experience.
Ethernet services are advantageous as they allow for the standardisation of services delivered to users connected over a wide variety of access networks, whether they are synchronous optical networking-or synchronous digital hierarchy-based networks, bonded T1/ E1s- and DSN/ESN-based networks, passive optical network fibre-based networks, direct fibre- or coax in cable multi-system operator-based networks. These delivery avenues offer inherent flexibility and reduced costs to deliver customer services, regardless of access.
The key differentiators of Carrier Ethernet services are:
? Convergence: A single pipe can be used to deliver voice, data or video.
? Cost: Ethernet provides hundred times the bandwidth for two times the price.
? Scalability: A wide range of bandwidths can be provided, from less than 1 MB to 10 GB and above.
? Flexibility: Existing infrastructure can be used to deliver Ethernet services.
? Differing class of service: Providers can differentiate service offerings across the same connections.
Carrier Ethernet services require tools that are compatible across heterogeneous, multi-vendor networks to allow visualisation and proactive monitoring of user-to-network interfaces (UNIs) and Ethernet virtual connections (EVCs); and an association of two or more UNIs, with support for the three types of EVCs. These include
E-line for point-to-point connections, E-LAN for multipoint-to-multipoint connections and E-Tree for rooted multipoint (point-to-multipoint) connections.
The difference between the LAN-based Ethernet and Carrier Ethernet offerings is that the business applications for the latter are characterised by higher standards in terms of quality of service (QoS), service management, scalability and reliability.
Business applications are mission critical and often traverse national and global networks. Carrier Ethernet is a shared service as opposed to traditional dedicated pipes such as T1s and OCNs. This presents a challenge for service providers to deliver capacity and QoS to meet contractual service level agreements (SLAs) and also to provide substantiating reports to the end-customer.
As Carrier Ethernet services become more commonplace and commoditised, QoS and customer experience will serve as differentiators between service providers. In particular, as mobile broadband-based data and video services expand with the continued proliferation of smartphones, the QoS parameter for Ethernet wireless backhaul will become critical to monitoring and assuring quality mobile network customer experience.
The broad acceptance of Ethernet services is partly due to the definition of standards; testing and verification standards from the International Telecommunication Union and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and SLA standards from the Metro Ethernet Forum.
Development of solutions to monitor and ensure end-to-end Ethernet services across multi-vendor, heterogeneous environments, however, has lagged behind the successful deployment of Ethernet services. As Carrier Ethernet services continue to grow, customers will demand transparency in the performance of the delivered services to make sure they are in compliance with the contractual QoS-based SLAs.
As Carrier Ethernet services mature, communication service providers will need to offer customer-centric performance monitoring and SLA compliance to their end-customers. Service providers will need tools to monitor a multi-vendor hardware environment, collect metrics, create customised key performance/quality indicators, proactively detect problems, understand the customer impact and manage customer SLAs.
With these new services, new levels of service management and QoS will be necessary. Service management will require the ability to monitor, diagnose and centrally manage the network using standards-based, vendor-independent implementations. Monitoring of SLAs will require end-to-end performance and matching the requirements for voice, video and data over converged business and residential networks. In addition, a new level of traffic management and bandwidth profiling will be essential for rate enforcement, shaping and policing.
Traffic management will require bandwidth profiles that can be applied to services and customers to monitor committed information rates and excessive information rates. Rate enforcement, shaping and policing profiles will need to be defined and enforced to monitor compliance with standards and traffic management on a service-by-service basis.
A multi-vendor service assurance solution for Ethernet services will entail issuing commands per EVC; diagnostics such as loopback and continuity checks; and proactive monitoring of service quality measurements such as availability, frame loss, delay and jitter. Based on this information, the service provider will be required to define SLAs based on the EVC service quality metrics to proactively identify violations that might affect other customer services. Standard service provider contracts for Ethernet services typically include SLAs for:
? Packet delay (latency)
? Packet delay variation (jitter)
? Packet loss (availability)
? Bandwidth usage (utilisation).
Developing a solution that can accurately and proactively monitor these SLAs will help the service provider secure new clients and retain existing ones. A comprehensive Ethernet monitoring solution will improve the customer experience by guaranteeing service performance. It will also offer a level of transparency by providing customers with their own portal to monitor the real-time and historical performance of services, and how these map to the contracted SLAs.
To sum up, Ethernet technology allows service providers to offer high-bandwidth, mission-critical, corporate services with greater flexibility and cost efficiency from their core network.
Whether they are being deployed for next-generation services or as a replacement to legacy technologies, Carrier Ethernet services are growing exponentially in the enterprise and wholesale markets, driven by high-bandwidth applications. This is especially true in the case of wholesale access and mobile backhaul services.
These new services are expected to deliver high quality user experience and demand SLAs. To meet these expectations, service providers need standards-based, multi-vendor, end-to-end network performance management and visibility to provide reliable services to their customers, regardless of the underlying network infrastructure.
