This year the interoperability hot staging test for the Carrier Ethernet World Congress took place in parallel to the Beijing Olympics.
80 engineers from 28 participating vendors with over 100 systems attended our test. According to data from Heavy Reading, more than 90% of the Carrier Ethernet switch and router market were represented in this test.
The participating vendors verified 34 test areas in any-to-any combinations in ten days, truly challenging the Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger". Carrier Ethernet implementations support more functions and cover more markets today - ranging from core to microwave to access, E-lines to E-trees, triple play to mobile backhaul.
It was an outstanding experience to witness the massive testing feast, a unique get-together of virtually all leading players with one single goal: To improve multi-vendor interoperability of advanced Carrier Ethernet implementations.
An EANTC panel of service providers worldwide including experts from COLT, GVT Brazil, PT TELKOM Indonesia, T-Systems and Metanoia Inc reviewed the test plan thoroughly to ensure the event's scenarios are realistic and sound.
Interestingly, market forces are operating at full strength. This year, we once again tested three transport technologies in the test event's metro/aggregation networks: MPLS, PBB-TE, and T-MPLS. These three compete to some extent - at our test, they all proved being well suited for the transport of Carrier Ethernet Services.
Service OAM support is becoming mandatory for aggregation and CPE devices; the Ethernet microwave market flourishes; mobile backhaul pushes support for backwards compatibility (ATM pseudowires, circuit emulation) and new features (clock synchronization, IEEE 1588v2, E-tree, among others).
This white paper summarizes in detail the monumental effort that the participating vendors and EANTC team underwent. Enjoy the read.
For the complete White Paper, download the PDF.
