The Recession Will Accelerate European Ethernet Services Adoption

The adoption of carrier Ethernet services in Europe will accelerate rapidly in 2009, driven by the low cost per bit, simplicity, and flexibility of these services. Service provider MPLS traffic and revenues will also grow in 2009, but will be outpaced by Ethernet traffic and revenue growth. Ethernet services are the WAN technology of choice for midsize firms and enterprises, for sites requiring more than about 4 Mbps of bandwidth. The adoption of videoconferencing and desktop virtualization is driving up site bandwidth requirements, so an increasing proportion of sites will migrate to Ethernet services. Any-to-any Ethernet LAN (E-LAN) services are replacing hub-and-spoke networks for high-speed networks of fewer than 50 sites, driven by simplicity and flexibility. To meet these needs, all of the leading service providers are deploying new VPLS-based networks, which support a complete range of Ethernet services including E-LAN and are also scalable and easy to manage. Most providers' infrastructure will continue to offer legacy Ethernet services delivered over SDH/SONET networks while demand persists, but these legacy services will eventually be entirely replaced by VPLS-based services.