Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2009: Evolution of Carrier Ethernet Technology

[#1]

By David Noguer Bau, Head of Carrier Ethernet, Juniper Networks

Today is the first “official” day at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress, with the sun shining on Berlin to make the setting perfect. The weather wasn’t the only thing that left me feeling very ebullient today, as we also took part in some very interesting panels. 

The first one, with Juniper’s Jean-Marc Uzé as the main speaker, was entitled “Current and future CE”. For the first time ever at Carrier Ethernet World Congress, the talk was more about the applications that can run on top of the carriers’ entire network, what its main uses are - not just how it is to be implemented. Some of the questions we tackled included how revenue-generating services can be built on top of carrier infrastructure, how to leverage fast services without impacting  network performance.

Another issue carriers raised with us during this session was how to help them stop focusing on the appliances in the network and converge it in a much more holistic way.   In another session this afternoon I heard a lot of people talking about how optical networks bring real value to networks and how they ultimately underpin an operator’s success in an NGN world. Packet optical transport networks are a sound approach for meeting future traffic requirements. I think these POTS have emerged as an effective means of converging multiple network layers to support Ethernet switches, simplifying the infrastructure.  

I ’d like to draw your attention to a story that one of our partners, Comptel Corporation, issued this week regarding the formalization of the relationship. This joint solution helps our service provider customers enhance the delivery of services to their subscribers and drive network value up while controlling costs. With Comptel’s service fulfillment software we can provide a truly intelligent and flexible networking infrastructure. See http://www.comptel.com/default.asp?docId=15741 for more information. 

But now I am really looking forward to the MEF award dinner tonight http://www.carrierethernetworld.com/programme/mef_service_provider_of_the_year_awards . We are the main sponsor of this award dinner and I am very excited about it. For once it will be nice not having to sit on the edge of my seat waiting to hear our name called out to know if we won. Tonight I’ll just sit back and take notes and be sure to let you know how it all turned out.