In November 2000, a group
of Ethernet vendors initiated their own standardization effort, under the auspices of
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), through the formation
of the Ethernet in the first mile (EFM) study group, which resulted in approval of the
IEEE 802.3ah standard at the end of 2004, providing a seamless connection between
the environment of enterprise and community LANs based on Ethernet technology and
emerging Carrier Ethernet equipment, thus minimizing the number of protocol conversions
and allowing service providers to take advantages of very robust, effective, and inexpensive
packet-based transmission technology.
Technology Description
In 1995, when the full-service access network (FSAN) initiative began to study PON
systems for FTTB/C/H, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) was envisioned as the base
technology for the LAN, MAN, and WAN worlds. Since that time, Ethernet has eclipsed
ATM, with over 320 million ports deployed worldwide (2000), offering staggering economies
of scale [1] and with a deployment rate exceeding 100 million ports per year
(2005). High-speed Gigabit Ethernet is in mass deployment, while 10 Gigabit Ethernet
products are already beginning to replace 1 Gigabit ports providing significant increase
in the available transmission bandwidth in a cost-effective manner.
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