Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2006 Public Interoperability Event

For this event, we have created a full-fledged MPLS backbone, tested 10Gigabit Ethernet optics between core router vendors, verified interoperability of various new IEEE standards for Ethernet resilience and OAM, and provided mock users with multicast IPTV content.

Since our last interoperability test at CEWC 2005, Carrier Ethernet marketing success has been outstanding. Last year we saw a few showstoppers for Carrier Ethernet deployment: lack of implementation of resilience and OAM mechanisms and lack of end-to-end provisioning and fault management. It is a very positive surprise to witness many improvements in most of these areas:

• Six vendors successfully tested multi-vendor interoperability of Ethernet OAM “Dying Gasp” (802.3ah) and continuity checks (802.1ag draft) for the first time ever, worldwide.

The existence of pre-standards implementations shows that vendors are eager to deliver OAM and fault detection solutions in their Carrier Ethernet products.

• 13 implementations passed the Ethernet Link Aggregation (802.3ad) tests, proving that native Ethernet link resilience is widely supported by now. Carriers urged us to address native Ethernet based node resilience in future events.

• MPLS, a widespread deployed foundation for large Carrier Ethernet networks, is a mature and reliable solution. We did not see any issues whatsoever for basic Ethernet services with seven vendors. Only small interoperability issues remained in the MPLS OAM space (LSP ping)

• Support for advanced traffic engineering in MPLS is slowly growing (the standards are of unequalled complexity); three vendors mastered our very challenging DiffServ-TE test.

We built a state-of-the-art backbone, aggregation and edge network of massive scale and diversity to support Carrier Ethernet services. The preparations took three month and the hot-staging event kept over 40 engineers from 16 vendors busy for eight testing days. Over 50 devices, 300 cables, 2.5 metric tons of devices were installed and untold amounts of coffee consumed.

The interoperability event was very successful and the experience gained is priceless. We hope you find the result useful.

To download your free copy of the EANTC White Paper, click on the link in the right-hand column of the page and fill out the brief registration form.