Optical networking: An overview

The third technology is Ethernet. Ethernet is a packet switching technology that was developed for LAN environments in 1973. Since then it has become very successful at Layer 2 and is naturally suitable for carrying data traffic.

The current boom in communications is driven more

The current boom in communications is driven more by Internet and data applications than by voice. Even voice is moving to packet based transport in the form of VOIP. Most of IP routers hand of traffic on Ethernet ports.

Ethernet is supported in transport networks in two ways. Through enhancements to SDH (like VCAT, GFP, LCAS) it can either be carried as Ethernet over SDH, or as Ethernet over Fiber/DWDM.The author is CTO at Tejas Networks Ltd.