To get things started, I'll invite each of the participants to introduce themselves and their companies.
Welcome to the Wide Area Ethernet / VPLS Summit
And many thanks to the sponsors of this Thought Leadership Summit.In this discussion, Webtorials Analyst Steven Taylor will be moderating a discussion among the leading suppliers of WAN Ethernet and VPLS services. We welcome and encourage your active contribution to the discussions.
Assume that both you and your competitors all have basic functions to pass data from one point to another. Beyond that, what are the most important characteristics - tangible and intangible - that customers should look for in choosing a provider?
One of the issues for using any managed service, including WAN Ethernet
/ VPLS services, is giving up direct hands-on management capabilities.
What type of management capabilities do you offer?
The last time that it was easy to compare service pricing head-to-head was for private line services. From frame relay to ATM to MPLS to Ethernet, each service provider has a different set of metrics for pricing.
Can you please briefly explain your pricing structure - and why you chose this model?
Metro Ethernet services are fairly well established and understood.
In moving to a WAN Ethernet service, what are the most important similarities and differences? How do you help users with this transition?
Assuming that your pricing is usage-based, how do you account for the
relatively high overhead of Ethernet packets as compared with protocols
such as MPLS - and even TCP/IP? In fact, several of the "legacy"
protocols would strip out the TCP/IP header at one end and re-insert at
the other.
Does the Ethernet packet size present a challenge? How do you address this?
Does the Ethernet packet size present a challenge? How do you address this?