A new IEEE P802.1Qay standard for connection-oriented Ethernet in Service Provider networks has completed the IEEE sponsor ballot process and entered the final phase of ratification. The goal is to provided connection-oriented characteristics and deterministic behavior for Ethernet in metro networks. 
The standard defines Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE), a technology that enables Service Providers to explicitly set up traffic engineered paths across a Carrier Ethernet Network.
The standard furnishes the ability to organize the traffic engineered path into Service Provider-defined linear protection groups to provide 1:1 resiliency. PBB-TE is based on layered VLAN tags and MAC-in-MAC encapsulation as defined in IEEE 802.1ah, Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB). By turning off Ethernet's Spanning Tree and media-access-control address-flooding and learning characteristics, PBB-TE enables Ethernet to evolve into an Ethernet Transport Resource Layer capable of replacing SONET/SDH as the Data Layer within Next Generation Transport Architectures.
Key features of PBB-TE include:
- Traffic engineering and resiliency
- Secure, deterministic delivery
- Service scalability
- Operational simplicity
- Service and transport layer independence
- Superior return on investment than alternative technologies, from leveraging the economies of scale inherent in Ethernet
With technical agreement on P802.1Qay now complete, a final review by the IEEE Standards Board is underway.
IEEE P802.1Qay is sponsored by the IEEE 802 Local and Area Network Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society.
http://www.ieee802.org
