Are you smarter than Ethernet?

At NXTcomm08, you’re likely to hear a lot of talk about making Ethernet more sophisticated, more discerning, and most of all, “more intelligent.”

Of course, stressing the need for a more intelligent brand of Ethernet isn’t very flattering to the plain-vanilla kind. But let’s face it, Ethernet has always been in some ways like the Forrest Gump of the networking world. It’s not complex, and occasionally it messes up, but it can run really fast, and it doesn’t seem to upset anyone, and because of those simple but valuable qualities, over the years, it’s turned up just about everywhere.

It’s also great at ping-pong. (D’Oh! I always take these analogies one step too far.)

At NXTcomm08, we’ll see the emergence of some new startup equipment vendors focused on Ethernet intelligence: Gridpoint Systems, for one, will exit stealth mode to unveil a control plane designed to manage connection-oriented Ethernet. Ethos Networks, not long out of stealth mode, will detail its approach to enforcing quality of service in metro Ethernet networks.

In addition to Ethos, at least one other, older Ethernet-over-copper vendor at the big show will be demonstrating new ways to meet service level agreements with Ethernet equipment. And as well, even major global vendors will be talking about new approaches to Ethernet QoS and operations, administration and maintenance, or OA&M. That’s not surprising given both the pain point that Ethernet OA&M has been for carriers and the recent maturation of industry standards addressing exactly that.

Expect to see equipment vendors with intelligent IP/MPLS systems include more Ethernet functionality in that gear as a way to speed up and economize the transport of traffic between intelligent network nodes. That may not be a matter of making Ethernet more intelligent as much as including it more in intelligence work.

At the same time, vendors at the show will be looking to help carriers balance new service deployment with legacy technology, using pseudowires, for example, to transport time-division traffic over Ethernet networks.

Expect to see more vendors at NXTcomm08 getting into the Ethernet-over-PDH game, even upstream from the customer premises gear that populates much of the market today. Another proposed remedy to the scarcity of fiber, EoPDH allows carriers to bond T-1 and T-3 lines to offer higher bandwidth Ethernet services over the resulting virtual link, moving beyond the impediment of T-1’s 1.5-Mb/s speeds, which seem slower every year.

Ethernet-over-copper gear like that and others (including bonded DSL systems) will also be touted loudly at NXTcomm08 as a solution for mobile backhaul as increasing data traffic threatens to clog cell station capacities. Most mobile operators seem highly interested in deploying carrier Ethernet for backhaul but haven’t acted on that interest quite yet. According to Infonetics Research, deployment of Ethernet mobile backhaul is likely to ramp up next year, making this summer’s event the perfect time to showcase the equipment.