Re: [EFM] What Ethernet are we talking about?
Carlos,
I agree that "the Ethernet that we are used to" is not what will be
deployed by service providers. I have been working with Ethernet for 21
years. At WorldCom we have been characterizing Ethernet in various
environments for several years. Many of the characteristics that will be
of interest to service providers are not even properly documented. I have
also been active in developing standards for mapping Ethernet into existing
transmission systems.
There are still gaps in what "Ethernet" can do. The character of VLANs
creates a flat network architecture that has scaling problems. VLANs will
also not classify as "Private Line", which is still a requirement of most
businesses. Several of the comments about segregation of customer traffic
is right on target.
Done properly, EFM can make it possible to provide high value services with
minimal cost to customers. EFM can also be a direct edge link for not only
new types of services but also an evolution for existing services.
Thank you,
Roy Bynum
WorldCom
At 07:36 PM 9/3/01 -0300, carlosal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Andrew,
>
> > That doesn't sound very much like the Ethernet or 802.3 that this
> > committee has worked on for the last few decades. Are you sure
> > this is the right place to get your requirements met?
>
>First of all, I need to apologize not only to you, but also to the group. I
>believe that I've been somewhat avid to hit the 'reply' button, and some of
>my comments reflect this lack of patience. So sorry if my comments seem a
>little out of place sometimes.
>
>Now for the real reason behind my comments about EFM requirements. I
>believe that the recent experience that most people (including me) have
>with newer Ethernet equipment may have biased our perception of what is
>Ethernet about. I've been a user of Ethernet for 15 years or so. It's not a
>long time for telecom operators, and even not a long time for Ethernet
>itself. However, given the evolution that we've been experiencing in LANs,
>its a very long time indeed. I've been using half-duplex Ethernets on coax
>cabling (remember the NE-2000 days?) years before Win3.11 made TCP/IP and
>Internet readily available for MS users, so I've been through parts of this
>long history.
>
>Ethernets of today are mostly switch-based P2P networks. Collisions are no
>more, and VLANs allow us to effectively isolate the broadcasts. In the end,
>the user experience is completely different from the one before, where we
>had a collision-based, shared-media network; these limitations gave way to
>a high speed, full duplex switched network.
>
>This change of perspective has a lot to do with my comments. It proved that
>we can have a excellent mix of the original Ethernet and point-to-point
>technology. The switched Ethernet of today is able to offer almost the same
>services that a Frame Relay network offered a few years ago, with much
>higher speed and much lower cost. As a benefit, you still get the VLAN
>concept, which is a much better implementation of the point-to-multipoint
>access network than any of the Frame Relay based alternatives, and makes
>scaling multicast applications much easier.
>
>The proposal to offer Ethernet-based access over a PON put us back on some
>of the questions that we were facing about 10 years ago, when modern
>Ethernet switches first arrived. On PONs, the shared media is back in the
>game. Some newer standards, such as 802.1q, work beautifully on switched
>LANs. However, the compromises that were made to make it compatible with
>older switches make the implementation of VLANs over PONs tricky at least.
>For instance, if some user puts a EPON compliant bridge on the segment,
>what does stop him from seeing all the broadcasts, even the ones from
>different users or VLANs? And how do you encrypt traffic per user, or per
>VLAN? Of course all these concerns can be (and they will be) handled; we
>could go and discuss the details, but that's not my goal, at least now. I
>just want to make it clear that we have reasons to raise these concerns,
>and I would like to see them openly discussed in this group.
>
>My last comment may seem a little out 'off topic', but it is a big concern
>of mine. Ethernet is only the layer 2, and it has to make a nice job at
>this. Please don't try to make it a single solution for all the problems.
>I'm yet to see someone collapse the entire network in a single 'fat layer',
>mixing L1, L2 and L3 functionality together, and make it *scale*. That's
>where the problem lies. This is part of the reason why I'm so concerned
>about VLANs and point-to-point connectivity; we need to have flexibility to
>be able to map any logical L3/IP topology over the basic L2/Ethernet access
>network. Limitations on the L2 topology will take out a lot of the value of
>the EFM proposal.
>
>
>Carlos Ribeiro
>CTBC Telecom