Sometime around Calendar Year 2000 packet traffic surpassed circuit traffic on
service provider networks worldwide. This fact and the success and proliferation of
Ethernet equipment and packets on Corporate networks meant that a great percentage
of the packet traffic on service provider networks were Ethernet packets. Much of
this traffic originated on TDM circuits with Enterprise customers. However, existing
circuit based networks while reliable were economically inefficient for carrying the
increasing demands of Ethernet packet traffic. So in 2000 the IEEE recognizing the
difficulty of creating metropolitan networks with Ethernet equipment authorized
the creation of the IEEE 802.17 working group. It had the charter of creating a
Layer 2 protocol, specifically a Media Access Controller (MAC) that would be appropriate
for transporting Ethernet and other packet traffic on fiber rings in metro
and regional configurations. Between 2000 and 2004 a standard was developed and
approved. Some of the characteristics of the Ethernet MAC that RPR was designed
to overcome. These have been discussed next.
No Support for Ring Topologies
The Ethernet MAC is specified for mesh and point-to-point topologies.
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