Nortel: Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem

Overview

Carrier Ethernet has emerged as the infrastructure of choice for the metro network of tomorrow. As traditional TDM-based services migrate to a packet-based network, operators worldwide are jumping on the opportunity to gain competitive and cost advantages offered by Ethernet. With the introduction of Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) and Provider Backbone Transport (PBT) technologies, Ethernet has gained scale, and determinism making it a natural fit for the metro and beyond.

The Carrier Ethernet Ecosystem was formed by key equipment and solutions providers to offer one-stop-shopping for the latest information on user experiences, best practices and business cases in the real-life use of Carrier Ethernet. This informal group of industry leaders continues to promote the use of Ethernet in carrier applications, advance the work in a number of standards bodies, and work towards practical interoperability of their various solutions.

Interoperability of hardware and software solutions is often the most significant barrier to wide-scale adoption of a new technology in a carrier environment. The commitment of our members to interoperability testing is intended to ease the burden of pre-testing and shorten the evaluation cycle for our solutions. We also engage in frequent public interoperability demonstrations to show the viability of Carrier Ethernet in real networks, running real applications.

Benefits of Joining

Participating in ecosystem interoperability testing activities provides ongoing proof to the industry of the growing ability to deploy multi-vendor Carrier Ethernet solutions with ease.
Interacting with other members leads to a considerable body of knowledge and a valuable set of best practices, useful in setting product priorities, avoiding deployment pitfalls, and encouraging standards development.
Membership allows access to the Innovation Center for Carrier Ethernet in Ottawa where participants can test their solutions in an advanced lab that simulates an actual carrier environment and reduce the risks associated with deploying individual solutions.
Members can leverage our common marketing outreach initiatives and thus achieve a superior ROI for their marketing spend. The Ecosystem ensures a coordinated message to the stakeholders in our industry along with efficient coverage of Carrier Ethernet technologies in the industry's leading events.
Consistent and powerful messaging is provided to the industry via a variety of published collateral (whitepapers, journal articles), as well as live presentations (webinars, panels).

How to join

If your company is interested in joining, please fill out the membership interest survey.