As a result, fiber
has become the solution of choice for large-scale, metro-regional, and backbone core
infrastructures, where the prime focus is on achieving low-cost per bit. More recently,
new build-outs are pushing this medium closer into the last-mile.
Concurrently, Ethernet has evolved over the last quarter century, becoming the preferred
networking technology in the enterprise/campus local area network (LAN) space.
Ethernet has proven low-costs, simplicity of installation and use, and minimal maintenance
overheads. Today, this technology is widely used to interconnect a myriad of enduser
devices??”computers, servers, storage devices, and printers??”and shipped ports
now number in the hundreds of millions. In all, this gives Ethernet unmatched ubiquity
and economies of scale. With growing end-user bandwidth demands, however,
there is a strong desire to migrate Ethernet??™s reach across larger metropolitan and
wide area network (MAN/WAN) domains. Traditionally, such Ethernet ???extension???
has been done by mapping over legacy ???voice-centric??? Time Division Multiplexing
(TDM) infrastructures, for example, Synchronous Optical NETworking (SONET)/
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) networks.
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