Ethernet Metadata Services call for interest

The following request for agenda time for a Ethernet Metadata Services call for interest has been received from David Ofelt. It will be discussed at the IEEE 802 LMSC July 2025 Plenary meeting in Madrid, Spain.

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One can view IEEE 802.3 Ethernet's primary function to be exchanging Ethernet frames between endpoints. It can be useful in many applications to augment those frames with additional control information to provide extra functionality between endpoints. This control information is considered metadata and can be associated with the frame or communicated as information that is independent of the frames.

There have been proprietary implementations in the industry that use metadata to provide features such as channelized Ethernet. Recently the AI/ML/HPC market has been identifying new extensions that provide capabilities such as retry for lost frames and new, richer, flow control functionality. Many of these are considering different mechanisms to provide very similar functionality.

Historically, there are several amendments to the Ethernet standard that provide extensions to allow transmission of metadata such as EPON, Packet Preemption, and Link Degrade signaling as examples.

There is an opportunity for 802.3 to provide the industry with a set of clean, extensible, per-frame and frame-independent multi-vendor interoperable mechanisms for metadata exchange which should facilitate future innovations using a common approach. This will allow extensions to ethernet to be defined by other SDOs for new or unforeseen features to meet evolving industry needs while maintaining the interoperability that makes ethernet ubiquitous.

This Call for Interest is to assess the support for formation of an "Ethernet Metadata Services" study group in IEEE 802.3 to consider the development of a PAR and CSD to address adding a common approach to support per-frame and frame-independent metadata services to IEEE 802.3 Ethernet.

The call for interest will take place during the IEEE 802.3 Opening Plenary on the morning of Monday 28 July 2025. The vote to determine if a Study Group will be formed will take place at the IEEE 802.3 Closing Plenary on the afternoon of Thursday 31 July 2025. Payment of a registration fee is required by anyone that attends any meeting, in person or remote, held during this plenary session.

A call for interest consensus-building teleconference meeting has been scheduled to occur in the NEA on Tuesday 22 July 2025, from 14h00 to 16h00 UTC. Please note that IMAT will be used to record attendance at the call for interest consensus-building meeting, which requires a free IEEE account. If you do not already have one and wish to participate in this call for interest consensus-building teleconference meeting, please ensure that you create an IEEE account before the meeting.