Metro Ethernet, MPLS Forums Join Forces

The Metro Ethernet Forum today announced the establishment of a formal,cooperative liaison relationship with the MPLS Forum to facilitate the development of MPLS and metro Ethernet technology and markets.

Created to accelerate the adoption of optical Ethernet in metro networks worldwide, the Metro Ethernet Forum consists of 65 member companies representing Ethernet service providers, major incumbent local exchange carriers, network equipment vendors and other networking companies. The MPLS Forum is an international industry organization driving worldwide deployment of multi-vendor MPLS networks, applications and services. The forum accomplishes this through interoperability initiatives, implementation agreements and education programs.

The two groups want to eliminate duplication of efforts and make sure they don’t come up with multiple standards for the same issues, says Ron Young, chairman of the board at MEF and chief marketing officer with Procket Networks. He adds that 17 companies have membership in both MEF and thhe MPLS Forum.

“The two groups realize they have a lot of synergy between them -- a lot of technical areas of interest,” adds Andrew G. Malis, president and chairman of the MPLS Forum and chief of technology at data communications equipment manufacturer Vivace.

Collaboration between the two groups will initially focus on two areas. One is on work being done in MPLS for fast outage restoration. The other is creating specs for Ethernet Transparent LAN Services (ETLS), to provide a virtual Ethernet service across packet-based WAN and MAN networks.

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