Since its development in 1976, Ethernet has taken over sector after sector of the networking world, from workgroups to enterprise backbones. Enter Optical Ethernet - a technology based on the proven Ethernet standard, but which adds the traffic engineering and management capabilities carriers need, and integrates these with optical networking to deliver the distances and speeds required to traverse metropolitan areas.
Ethernet is a simple and widely understood technology.
Optical technologies enable Ethernet networks to extend over much greater distances than campus Ethernet nets. Key components of Optical Ethernet are the abilities to segregate traffic of different users and to deliver the particular service level each user purchases. This standard lets Optical Ethernet networks mark each user's traffic with a VLAN tag as it enters the network and then use this tag to keep each user's traffic separate as it crosses the network. Of course, 802.1pQ was designed for enterprise networks and the number of possible VLAN tags is too low. Work is under way in IEEE to extend this number from 4,096 to approximately 16 million.