Nine major technological trends in Ethernet Development

From 10 m to 10G, in just over a dozen years, the development of Ethernet technology has completed an order of magnitude leap, the formation of new high-speed Ethernet technology standards, enable Ethernet technology out of the narrow space of the LAN and fully support the construction of large-scale and long-distance networks such as WAN and MAN. In addition, the development of MPLS technology and the gradual maturity of fast self-healing STP technology allow Ethernet technology to provide users with different QoS network services, in addition, the Ethernet technology has the characteristics of low networking cost and simple network expansion. The Metro Ethernet technology is favored by major carriers in China. In the future, Ethernet technology will show the following trends.
End-to-End QoS becomes the future direction

After more than ten years of development, the emergence of new services and new applications means the consumption of more network resources. This only ensures that high bandwidth cannot meet the requirements of applications. How to Ensure the end-to-end QoS of network applications has become the biggest challenge facing Ethernet today. The traditional network construction mode cannot meet the application's QoS requirements. network applications urgently need devices to support QoS to the edge and access layers. In the past, high QoS in the network meant a high price. However, with the development of ASIC technology, it is possible that low-end devices have powerful QoS capabilities. The network's QoS has gradually transitioned from centralized assurance to end-to-end assurance.

More mature Multicast Technology

The improvement of the Protocol will promote the development of multicast applications. Although there are still many difficulties to overcome to achieve large-scale multicast applications, the prospect of multicast applications is still optimistic, especially when the number of multimedia services is increasing, multicast has a huge market potential. At present, in China, operators have invested a lot of money in broadband network construction to "circle the land", but how to use these networks to turn the initial investment into output, there is still no effective means. As a parallel transmission method with unicast, multicast not only reduces the occupation of network resources, but also improves scalability, it is also convenient to provide some new services by using the multicast feature of the network. With the increasing number of multimedia services in the network, the superiority and importance of multicast become more and more obvious.

Ethernet will become a safer Network

Vswitches have made great progress in security technology to address various security risks existing in Traditional Ethernet networks, access control, user authentication, anti-address counterfeiting, intrusion detection and prevention, and security management are indispensable features of Ethernet switches.

Development of Intelligent Recognition Technology

With the development of the chip technology, people's demand for network devices will gradually increase. Users no longer want to use vswitches to complete basic layer-2 bridging and layer-3 forwarding tasks, but pay more attention to the business needs in the network. They hope that the new vswitch will have the characteristics of smart forwarding. These devices identify and forward different user groups and application levels based on different message types, service priorities, and security requirements to meet the needs of different users. Intelligent Identification technology will be gradually applied in Ethernet switches.

Simplified device management

Web management began to appear. The access layer equipment provides convenient management methods for general enterprise users because of its low cost. The Web-based management interface makes network maintenance and management more humane. For operating networks and large enterprises, because of the large number of devices at the access layer and huge maintenance workload, it is urgent to provide devices with a unified management and maintenance means, that is, the cluster management protocol.

Improved user management functions

Since its birth, Ethernet has become the mainstream network technology with its excellent performance and economic price, but it has also encountered various challenges in its application. For example, there is a lack of user management mechanisms, network storms, and frequent network attacks in the network. Therefore, the user management technology is rapidly enriched into Ethernet technology. The authentication technology allows only legitimate users to use the network. Common network authentication technologies include VLAN + WEB Authentication and 802.1x authentication. The emergence of a variety of authentication technologies enables Ethernet to achieve better user management features, thus laying the foundation for Ethernet operation and management.

VPN and other services are transferred from backbone to aggregation

With the development of the Ethernet switch chip technology and the improvement of the performance of the Convergence layer equipment, the mpls vpn Service originally provided by the backbone equipment is gradually provided by the convergence layer Ethernet switch. The main reason for the original provision by backbone devices is that the capabilities and performance of the Convergence layer equipment are insufficient. However, the performance of the Ethernet switch on the Convergence layer has exceeded that of the original backbone device. In terms of service provision, the aggregation layer has many backbone devices, which are closer to users and more convenient for services. According to the reliability of the network, the backbone equipment should develop to simplify functions due to its special location.

Control functions gradually shift from centralized to distributed

Originally, a BAS device was placed next to a large Ethernet switch. However, as the number of users increases, centralized user control and user access authentication gradually develop towards distributed control. Centralized Control has scalability problems in networking, and bandwidth may be wasted. The user's control function is gradually moved down to the aggregation part of the access layer, such as the residential exit. Although user control functions are distributed, users' Business Management, billing, and authentication are all implemented on the business platform. In the distributed mode, the simple user control and access authentication functions are gradually completed by the Ethernet switch, and the complete user management functions are completed by the distributed BAS.

Vswitches and vrouters will gradually integrate

Vswitch technology and vro technology have been developing in parallel in terms of network development. As a device that acts on LAN technology, the switch is considered to be used only on the LAN. If you want to connect to the WAN, It is a router. In fact, with the development and maturity of ASIC Technology and network processors and the gradual unification of networks by IP technology, the Ethernet switch technology has come out of the "bridge" device framework of the year, it can be applied to the aggregation layer and backbone layer, and all the network interfaces in the vro can be implemented on the current vswitch. The vro has a variety of routing protocols, A large number of specific applications are also obtained in vswitches. large-capacity route tables in vrouters can also be implemented in vswitches currently. vro technology uses the largest address matching idea in route search, now, on the backbone layer-3 switch, the maximum matching forwarding speed can reach the line speed.