Why is a Metro Ethernet so appealing today?
For many service providers the big issue today is the migration towards integrated triple play (voice, video and data) services and Enterprise VPN offerings. Metro Ethernet network (ME) is an attractive proposition to service providers as it is supposed to bear all these services on IP/Ethernet technology in one unified network.

Also, service providers must look for alternative solutions to move access points closer to customers to ensure granular QoS, as this plays an integral part of their future plans to expand their portfolios to include VPN and IPTV.

Recent studies have also revealed that the CAPEX and OPEX of ME operated at a fraction of the cost of existing offerings such as ATM/FR and SDH/SONET.

Does it change the game plan?
While 'ordinary' Ethernets are widely deployed and well understood, Metro Ethernets unlock more potential than its predecessor. Not merely bringing Ethernet interfaces (UNI) to the edge, it also encompasses multi-service capability and flexibility in a single connection, scaling up to 10Gbps in small increments on demand without the complexity associated with traditional solutions.

With its perceived lower cost and applications friendliness, Metro Ethernets are already gaining popularity amongst enterprise customers and personal subscribers. For many ISPs, who are fairly new to world of offering value-added services, Metro Ethernets are usually the preferred solution because of the fast deployment, easy management and high scalability both on services and on bandwidth they offer.

Will Huawei-3Com be your answer in Metro Ethernet offerings?
In Brazil and Peru, Telefonica deployed S8500's as edge/aggregation switches to build a large scale Metro Ethernet network. Through Huawei-3Com, a high availability multi-service network with advanced QoS was up and running within six months and seamlessly integrated with their existing infrastructure.

For the residential market, ATM-based DSL has been used for years, and is honed into a well-defined architecture. Increasingly, DSLAM backhaul architecture is off-loading traffic from ATM to ME to enable higher access rates and richer services, such as triple play, VoIP, IPTV and SLA bound VPN etc. As part of this migration, more IP routing and traffic intelligence will be distributed to the edge by using IP-based DSLAM. As one of the leaders in large-scale DSLAM offerings, Huawei-3Com is well poised to revolutionize the ME and DSLAM arena with its cutting edge technology and turnkey solutions, from end-to-end.

Can ME deliver carrier-grade resiliency?
The Huawei-3Com 10G Metro switch family, including the S8500 and S6500 series, is ideal for building metro access and aggregation elements with carrier grade resiliency and reliability running at a jaw-dropping switching capability up to 720Gbps.

Amongst its industry-leading high availability features, S8500 natively supports "plug and play" Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) protection; 50-ms protection switching inherits SONET/SDH level reliability at the low cost of Ethernet. Huawei-3Com is also an active member of the IEEE 802.17(i.e. RPR) working group and a zealous advocate in the formulation of an open RPR standard.

Huawei-3Com's solutions seamlessly handle end-to-end QoS requirements for CIR and EIR to guarantee the most stringent SLAs for VPN customers, and promises to deliver Diff-Serv QoS and comprehensive security for future triple play solutions. S8500 also supports packet-switching based on 802.1p and deep packet inspection of QinQ packets. MPLS/VPLS and L2/L3 VPN based on MPLS technology are also available. Today, service providers worldwide are turning to Our for their ME solutions.