This book is your survival guide to making sense of the complex technologies and burgeoning opportunities of ethernet in the metro access and core. Suddenly all the action in telecom is on the local segment of the carrier network - the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). The big challenge in 2002 and beyond will be to re-architect MANs for broadband services. Of course, great promise comes with great risk, and in today's confusing telecom market people are searching for ways to minimize the unknowns."Ethernet-Based Area Networks" is the perfect first resource for assessing your technology options in terms of next-generation platforms, products, and business models. This is the first book to review all emerging metro protocols and their interactions and likely market impact. Written by hands-on industry insiders, "Ethernet-Based Area Networks": sorts out options and reviews each proposed solution against application requirements; helps you find your way through complicated regulatory issues; offers design approaches and business models for real-world deployments; details new and proposed standards for the metro environment; critically examines broadband architectures; and challenges providers to think out of the box. If you've been looking for an informative, plainspoken reference that sheds light on all corners of the metro access and metro core environments - your search ends here.