New Carrier Ethernet Services Offered by CE 2.0

Carrier Ethernet has come out of nowhere over the last few years to be the copper and fiber connection service of choice. There are a lot of good reasons why companies are switching to Ethernet bandwidth service in droves. Now they’ll have even more choices since the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) has introduced Carrier Ethernet 2.0.

Did you know that there was a Carrier Ethernet 1.0? That’s the moniker of the original set of standards that defined Carrier Ethernet. It wasn’t called that until these new services were introduced and the MEF needed a term to describe the existing standards. Not to worry. Both CE 1.0 and CE 2.0 are compatible. What Carrier Ethernet 2.0 does is expand the set of defined standardized Ethernet services from 3 to 8.

What are these new Ethernet services and what can they do for your company? Let’s take a look at what we have now. The role of the MEF has been to extend the LAN Ethernet standard that has become almost universal for interconnecting computer systems in-house so that it will work for Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN). Part of getting Ethernet on telecom carrier networks has been to standardize service offerings so that they will be similar and compatible from network to network. That’s led to three popular standardized Ethernet services. These are E-Line, E-LAN and E-Tree.

Ethernet Line (E-Line) service is the familiar point to point dedicated private line. Only your traffic exists on this line service and it only connects two locations. Companies often buy private lines to connect a remote data center, branch office, factory or warehouse back to headquarters. T1 lines are popular on the low end (1.5 Mbps), DS3 for modest bandwidths of 45 Mbps, and SONET fiber optic services for higher bandwidth requirements. Ethernet Line Service does all of this as well or better. E-Line is also used for dedicated Ethernet Internet Access connections.

E-Line offers several big advantages over legacy telecom private line services. First, it is Ethernet. That means it is inherently compatible with your existing local network. Simply connect your network edge router to the Ethernet connection installed by your service provider and you are in business. There is no need to worry about any fancy protocol conversions to make things work. E-Line bandwidths are far more scalable than other solutions. You can get just about any bandwidth level you desire, up to the maximum capacity of the installed port. You only need to make a hardware change if you need a faster port. Finally, Ethernet is less costly than T-Carrier or SONET on a per Mbps basis. It is not uncommon to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost as you are paying for a legacy service.

Ethernet LAN (E-LAN) service is a multipoint service designed to connect multiple business locations. This is a mesh network, similar to your LAN. All locations can communicate with each other easily. Ethernet LAN is just that. It creates a bridged connection among three or more geographically dispersed LANs.

Ethernet Tree (E-Tree) service is a hub and spoke network like the one many companies built themselves to connect a HQ location to many branch offices or franchises. Tree structures are also used for broadcast distribution. All locations communicate with the hub, but not each other. Traffic between leaves in the tree network are managed by the central hub.

E-Line, E-LAN and E-Tree are the three standardized Carrier Ethernet services of CE 1.0. The service types for each of these are doubled in CE 2.0 to include private and virtual private variants.

Ethernet Access (E-Access) is something new with two service types created for CE 2.0. This is something for wholesale access services, where a larger network sells Carrier Ethernet services to a smaller network through an Ethernet Network to Network Interface (ENNI). The two services are Access EPL (Ethernet Private Line) and Access EVPL (Ethernet Virtual Private Line). One of the additional features of CE 2.0 is the addition of a standardized ENNI so that networks can connect worldwide and offer Carrier Ethernet with an enormous service footprint.

Is your company looking at expanded or alternative interconnection services? This would be a good time to get a fresh set of Carrier Ethernet quotes for one or more business locations. The level of competition among Ethernet carriers is intense, with more services at lower prices being provided in nearly all markets compared to even a year ago.

Cross-Border Private Line Services

When we think of ordering private line services, we’re usually looking to connect a couple of business locations within the country. Granted, one may be on the East coast and the other on the West coast, but you’re still taking about the same nation. Sometimes, though, you’ve got to cross an international border to do business. In that case you need international network or cross-border line services.

Not every carrier does business internationally. In fact, there are really only a handful compared to all the others that operate regionally within a few bordering states or have a nationwide footprint. When you go from one country to another, you are dealing with different laws, different customs and sometimes even different technical standards.

For instance, did you know that the companding standard for digitized switch-circuit telephone calls is different between the US and Europe? They are almost, but not quite, identical. The standard CODEC (Coder/Decoder) for PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) is G.711. To improve the signal to noise ratio and create quieter calls, a technique called companding is used. Basically, the voice signal is compressed when it is sent and expanded on the other end. The compression doesn’t affect the noise on the line, but the expansion makes whatever noise is picked up during transmission lower in volume. The compression algorithm Mu-law is used in North America and Japan. Another algorithm called A-law is used in Europe and the rest of the world. By convention, A-law is the default for telephone connections where one party is in a country using A-law.

The same can be said about T1 lines. In Europe, there is no such thing as a T1 line. Over there the standard is E1. What’s the difference? It comes down to the number of channels and bandwidth of the line. T1 lines run at 1.5 Mbps using 24 channels of 64 Kbps each. That channel size was chosen as the standard for the PCM digital telephony just described. The US, Canada, Japan and South Korea use the T1 line standard. Japan calls their slightly different version J1. Europe and the rest of the world use E1 as a standard. E1 lines run at 2 Mbps and have 30 channels or time slots instead of 24.

None of this makes a hoot of difference unless you are trying to connect traffic from one country to another. Then, suddenly, being able to make the conversions between standards becomes critically important. Obviously, it’s possible to interface T1 to E1 and have your equipment set up to switch from Mu-law to A-law when needed. We communicate globally with no effort on the user’s part whatsoever. But somewhere along the line, someone has make that border crossing interface so that traffic flows smoothly. Those are your international carriers.

What cross-border telecom services are available? Private data lines are very popular with multi-national companies or companies that do business internationally. If there are only two locations, a point to point circuit with the right bandwidth is what you are looking for. If you have multiple locations, some of which are in other countries, a MPLS network is likely a better answer. MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The multi-protocol aspect means that it can handle just about anything you can throw at it. An international carrier running an MPLS network can pick up your traffic anywhere they have a Point Of Presence and drop it off at any of their other POPs. You use an appropriate last mile connection, say T1, E1, Ethernet over Copper, SONET, Ethernet over Fiber, etc., to connect to the network POP.

Here’s an interesting fact. You may find that if the distance is long enough, an MPLS network is less expensive than a dedicated private line even for only two locations. That’s because the engineering and operations cost for that special private line can be substantial compared to an MPLS network that is already in place near your business locations.

Do you have a need to connect from the United States to one or more international destinations? Check cross-border line service availability and pricing to see just what your options are from carriers that specialize in these types of connections.



Note: Earth globe graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Metro Ethernet vs MPLS Networking

In addition to dedicated Internet access, many companies also need point to point private lines and/or multipoint network connections. The classic way to accomplish this has been to lease private lines to create your own wide area network setup. There are two other methods available that can give you the same results for considerably less cost.

Metro Ethernet service has been seen as a way to get point to point connections in town at a lower cost than leasing dedicated line services, such as DS3 or OC3. This service is called E-Line or Ethernet Line. It’s is standardized by the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) so you can compare E-Line services from multiple vendors and know that you are getting the same product.

What’s the difference between ordering an E-Line connection at 50 Mbps versus a DS3 dedicated line at 45 Mbps? When you order a dedicated line, you can envision having a pair of wires going from your headquarters, through a cross-connect at the telco central office and then out to your branch office. That’s probably true for a T1 line provisioned on two twisted copper pair. When you get into DS3 and higher bandwidths, your connection will probably be carried via SONET fiber optic service using an add/drop multiplexer. Along the way, your signal will be traveling with many other who share the same fiber strand.

Here’s what’s important: Unless you actually go out and construct or lease the copper or fiber transmission medium, you are using a shared or multi-tenant service. It’s true with Metro Ethernet and MPLS Networks. It’s also true with dedicated line services. The difference is that MPLS and Metro Ethernet are packet switched networks while T-Carrier and SONET services are circuit switched. With circuit switching, the circuit is used only for your traffic on a single path that is “nailed up” for the time you hold the lease. With packet switching, other traffic can share common paths through the network. That does two things. It lowers the price of the service and it makes some additional services possible.

Metro Ethernet has both an Ethernet Private Line and Ethernet Virtual Private Line service available. The virtualization means that you only need to install one Carrier Ethernet port to have connections with two or more locations. The actual physical line is shared among your own traffic. You may have ten or more branch offices, retail stores or other locations in town. With EVPL you can have point to point connections to many locations coming in through one UNI (User Network Interface).

Here’s another service you can get with Metro Ethernet. It’s called E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service. This is a meshed network that lets many locations all communicate without going through a single point. E-LAN is popular for interconnecting a company’s many independent LANs in the same geographical area. This can be done at the layer 2 level so that the entire network looks like one giant bridged network.

Interconnecting multiple locations is also the domain of MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks. Many of these have regional, national or even international service footprints so that all of your far flung locations can interact on the same network. MPLS may be the solution of choice for covering geographical areas larger than a single city and its suburbs. MPLS can also be used to create point to point connections for only two locations. When those locations are located on opposite coasts or in different countries, MPLS can be a better deal than Ethernet Line service or point to point dedicated line services.

Since Ethernet and MPLS services overlap to some extent, what criteria do you use to make a choice? I’d recommend getting price quotes for these, plus dedicated lines, and comparing the total lease cost for the same bandwidth and other requirements. You can get networking bandwidth quotes from multiple service providers quickly and easily using the GeoQuote tool. In fact, many line services to 1 Gbps quote automatically online.