The Metro Ethernet Forum announced its formation and mission to accelerate the adoption of optical Ethernet technology in metro networks. The non-profit Forum was founded by a group of 37 companies including service providers, incumbent local exchange carriers, network equipment vendors and other networking companies.
The Metro Ethernet Forum's objectives are to:
* Maximize the deployment of Ethernet-based metro networks
* Drive the implementation of existing and new technologies and standards that enable end-to-end Ethernet service creation and optimize the operation, administration and management of Ethernet in metro networks
* Facilitate broad interoperability of optical Ethernet services and solutions in metro networks
* Enhance worldwide awareness of optical Ethernet services, solutions and benefits for metro networks.
"As communications service providers evaluate technologies upon which to build their metro networks, they will increasingly be drawn to Ethernet's simplicity, flexibility and cost advantages," said Ron Young, Chairman of the Board of the Metro Ethernet Forum, and Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Yipes Communications. "The members of the Forum are committed to making optical Ethernet the simple and obvious choice for the metro."
According to Mark Fabbi, Vice President and Chief Analyst at The Gartner Group, "as new optical technologies increase bandwidth and extend Ethernet-dominated campus network design concepts into the MAN and WAN, the need for industry cooperation in nurturing the metro access market is paramount. With Ethernet becoming the new service provider demarcation point, enterprises will rely on new carrier-class services to extend their enterprise networks."
"The Metro Ethernet Forum's goal is to make optical Ethernet the transport technology of choice for carrier-class metro networks that support both IP and TDM traffic," said Nan Chen, President of the Metro Ethernet Forum and Director of Product Marketing at Atrica, Inc. "This Forum will leverage existing standards and technologies as much as possible and facilitate the development of new standards, service definitions and operational agreements necessary to bring multi-vendor optical Ethernet into metro networks."
The Metro Ethernet Forum was incorporated on May 21, 2001 and held its first member meeting on June 6 at SuperComm in Atlanta. The Forum boasted attendance of more than 40 representatives from its 37 charter member companies.
Elected officers of the Metro Ethernet Forum are:
* Ron Young (Yipes) -- Chairman of the Board
* Nan Chen (Atrica) -- President
* Tony Lee (Extreme Networks) -- Vice President and Treasurer
* Pascal Menezes (Terabeam) -- Vice President and Secretary
* Paul Bottorff (Nortel Networks) -- Vice President and Co-chair, Technical Committee
* Bob Klessig (Telseon) -- Vice President and Co-chair, Technical Committee
* Edward Chang (Riverstone Networks) -- Vice President and Co-chair, Marketing Committee
* Kamran Sistanizadeh (Yipes) -- Vice President and Co-chair, Marketing Committee
The Forum's Board of Directors is comprised of industry and technology leaders:
* Ralph Ballart, VP, Broadband Infrastructure and Services, SBC Communications
* Paul Bottorff, Director, Switching Architecture, Nortel Networks
* Herb Cash, Network VP, BellSouth, Corp.
* Edward Chang, Sr. Director, Product Marketing and Management, Riverstone Networks
* Nan Chen, Director, Product Marketing, Atrica, Inc.
* Bob Klessig, Founder and VP, Product Development, Telseon
* Tony Lee, Sr. Director Marketing, Extreme Networks
* Chris McGugan, Sr. Manager of Marketing, Cisco Systems
* Octavio Morales, VP, Marketing, World Wide Packets
* Ron Young, Founder and Chief Marketing Officer, Yipes
The membership of the Metro Ethernet Forum is made up of various companies in the communications industry. Members include 3Com Corp. (NASDAQ: COMS), Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: A), Alcatel (NYSE: ALA), Aura Networks, Avaya, Inc. (NYSE: AV), Atrica, Inc., BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS), Cisco Systems, Corning Inc., (NYSE: GLW), CoSine Communications (NASDAQ: COSN), Dynarc Inc., Extreme Networks (NASDAQ: EXTR), Fiberintheloop, Foundry Networks (NASDAQ: FDRY), Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HWP), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Internet Photonics, Inc., Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR), Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), Luminous Networks, LuxN, Maple Optical Systems, Metera Networks, Nortel Networks (NYSE: NT), ONI Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: ONIS), Photonami Inc., Riverstone Networks (NASDAQ: RSTN), SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC), Telseon, Terabeam, Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), TiMetra Inc., Utfors, VIPswitch, Vpacket Communications, World Wide Packets, and Yipes Communications.
About The Metro Ethernet Forum:
The Metro Ethernet Forum was founded by more than 33 charter member companies representing a range of Ethernet service providers, incumbent local exchange carriers, network equipment vendors and other networking companies. For more information, visit www.MetroEthernetForum.org.