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Charting the shift to multiservice networks in telecom is a little like watching the seasons change. Staring at the buds of a tree branch for any tolerable period of time wouldn't yield a sense of transformation, but over time, splashes of color appear where none were before, until one day everything is green.

Perhaps especially in the U.S., the buds of multiservice networks are opening slowly and cautiously. RHK estimates that only 20% to 30% of the available ports on transport gear installed by service providers around the globe in 2005 will include Ethernet interfaces. In North America, the number is even lower. SONET/SDH, which took about five years to dominate optical networks after its birth in the late 1980s, “will remain the foundation of optical edge aggregation networks for the current planning horizon,” RHK wrote in a report published in March.

Global revenue from multiservice switches supporting frame relay and ATM traffic increased 9% last year to $2.3 billion, according to research firm In-Stat. And although In-Stat admits the market for such gear is “mature,” giving way in the long run to IP and MPLS routers, the firm's research predicts multiservice switch revenue to grow another 7% this year and 6% annually over at least the next five years.

“The convergence to MPLS cores seems to be going fairly slowly in the U.S.; the majority of service providers haven't migrated their complete networks over,” said In-Stat analyst Henry Goldberg. “They're also finding new applications for [multiservice switches]. There are growing requirements for aggregation of broadband traffic. Using these products for wireless networks is a key growth area.” And, though metro Ethernet services are growing rapidly, sales are still relatively low compared with frame relay services, Goldberg said.

The Metro Ethernet Forum has laid groundwork for a standards-based certification process for “Carrier Ethernet,” a form of Ethernet suited to the traffic management requirements of carrier networks. But it will take years for carrier Ethernet equipment to gain dominance. Until then, carriers must wrestle with the middle ground, the blending of legacy networks with Ethernet, IP and MPLS traffic.

Carriers are making progress on that front, recognizing the need for converged Ethernet services. “It's like a 12-step program: The first step is to recognize when you have the problem,” said Greg Colandrea, director of product marketing for metro Ethernet equipment vendor Ceterus Networks. Though IXCs were relatively early to adapt to the need for Ethernet services, RBOCs hesitated, fearful of cannibalizing their Frame Relay and ATM services business.

“Last year, RBOCs didn't even want to talk to us,” said Jim Tindall, Ceterus' vice president of marketing and customer support. “They can't stand to eat their own children.”

These days, however, carriers are much more receptive to converged Ethernet architectures, Tindall said. And as a result, vendors are introducing a variety of new products — and new customers — at the Supercomm trade show to bridge the gap between legacy networks and the multiservice generation.

Ceterus, which uses circuit bonding to enable carriers to offer Ethernet services over existing copper networks, is also unveiling a multiservice cross-connect at Supercomm.

At 8 rack units tall (a little over a foot high), the UTX 8212's relatively compact size is an advantage over larger cross-connects, the company said. It can aggregate traffic from more than 100 of Ceterus' customer premises devices, grooming at the DS-0 (or, for Ethernet, 100 kb/s) level up to the OC-12 (or 10-Gb/s Ethernet) level. But the product's biggest selling point is the way it opens up copper to new Ethernet services, Tindall said.

“A circuit-bonding approach gives service providers a way to reach every single one of its enterprise customers,” Tindall said. “There's no requirement for enterprise locations to be fed by fiber. That's been one of the key things holding back wide-area Ethernet.”

Overture Networks, another circuit-bonding equipment vendor, is introducing two new cards for its ISG 5000 access platform at the show, both generally available in mid-July. One is a channelized DS-3 card that can be inserted into three of the 5000's four slots to increase the number of access links than can aggregate in the same platform. Instead of being able to aggregate traffic from only three customer premises devices, the 5000 will now be able to handle 24. “All of a sudden, your aggregation price points become much more attractive,” said Chip Redden, Overture's vice president of marketing and product development.

The other new Overture product at the show is a dual gigabit-Ethernet ring card that provides the protection of a ring in just one slot instead of two, which the company's previous solution required. Traffic running though the two-port card doesn't leave the ring to run through the box's processors unless it's meant to. “Say you've got [traffic from] 24 boxes coming into one, and that one is now sitting on a resilient ring,” Redden said. “You're increasing your chances of getting traffic through to the core at all times.”

Turin Networks' new product is also focused on protecting Ethernet traffic. A new module for its flagship Ethernet-over-Sonet/SDH multiservice transport switch offers sub-millisecond protection for the Ethernet link between the carrier and the customer in case of fiber or equipment failures.

“It's been awkward” trying to sell Ethernet-over-Sonet gear without having protected access links, said Turin's director of product marketing Kevin Wade. “It was a glaring weakness to say the least.”

Riverstone Networks is debuting new interfaces for inter-worked layer 2 and layer 3 virtual private networks to its 15000 series of Ethernet edge routers. With these, carriers deploying triple-play services with existing ATM-based DSLAMs at the edge of their networks can replace their existing ATM switches with the 15000 without replacing those existing DSLAMs.

Actelis Networks is adding metro Ethernet switching functions to its MetaLight 1300 point-to-multipoint Ethernet platform. Thus far, carriers have been using the 40-Mb/s 1300 as an extension shelf for metro Ethernet switches. But where carriers don't have metro Ethernet switches, the new release of the product — with new plug-in cards and software — can serve as a sort of local stand-in for a metro Ethernet switch, albeit a simpler one without all the features of a typical switch. “They're just simple nodes extending your metro Ethernet switch capability,” said Yossi Saad, Actelis' vice president of marketing.

Actelis is also announcing that its Ethernet-over-copper equipment has been deployed by a regional Bell operating company in this year's first quarter. The company expects to add two more RBOCs to its customer list before the end of the year.

Eastern Research — which is an equipment vendor, despite the name it was stuck with from an earlier period (“Everyone admits now it wasn't a good choice,” a spokesperson said) — is introducing a new multiservice cross-connect, the OX 8000, which can handle up to 8,000 T-1s.

Eastern hopes its product will stand out for being less expensive and more modular than those of larger vendors. Whereas other cross-connects require the addition of separate administrative shelves to expand, the OX 8000 can subtend up to 24 additional shelves from the main shelf, all managed as a single network element. “Every chassis is the same chassis,” said Denise Oliver, the 8000's product manager.

Eastern expects its base of utility and wireless carrier customers to trial the new products through 2005, with general availability beginning in 2006.

Anda Networks is also introducing a multiservice cross-connect at the show: the 140 Gb/s EtherDAX 6000, which can aggregate thousands of Ethernet links — a product Anda said probably wasn't necessary only a year ago due to the relative youth of the Ethernet services market then. Generally available near the end of 2005 at less than $100,000, Anda claims the EtherDAX is half the cost per port of existing gear. And on the heels of its announcement that MCI is deploying its equipment in a sweeping 25-city service rollout, Anda is announcing at the show that Bell Canada and Rogers Wireless have also joined its client list. American RBOCs are interested, too, said Greg Gum, Anda's vice president of marketing and business development.

“The RBOCs are starting to get the religion in terms of offering Ethernet as a business service,” Gum said. “We've seen a tremendous uptic over last two quarters … all these guys now are starting to ramp up.”

in billions of dollars

2002	2.5
2003	2.1
2004	2.3
2005	2.5
Source: In-Stat