1/15/2008 -- Ethernet, Ethernet everywhere. That's the upshot of new research from market watcher Infonetics, which found that Ethernet -- the 30-year-old technology that could -- continues to branch out into non-traditional market segments.

Look no further than the high-stakes service provider space, where, according to Infonetics, carriers will embrace a new flavor of Ethernet -- namely, connection-oriented Ethernet -- to simplify their network layers, achieve improved cost-efficiency and move to an all-packet infrastructure.

More to the point, Infonetics suggested, service providers will adopt a new transport layer, based on a fused Ethernet-WDM packet transport with circuit-like capabilities via Ethernet transport tunnels. That, in a nutshell, describes connection-oriented Ethernet.

What does this mean for the infrastructure status quo? Whole-scale transformation, from the looks of it. For one thing, Infonetics said, the service layer above the Ethernet-WDM transport will be simplified to IP/MPLS/Ethernet, and service providers will reduce their use of SONET and SDH in transport and on ATM in service layers. SONET's and ATM's loss is Ethernet's gain; carriers will increase their use of Ethernet in the service and transport layers, which should translate into a growing IP router and carrier Ethernet switch market.

"COE Ethernet transport tunnel technologies like T-MPLS and PBT are seeing strong adoption given their early stage of development, and will be an essential ingredient of the service and optical transport layers, as they allow the displacement of SONET/SDH and enable carrier Ethernet switches to displace some routers," said Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics Research, in a statement. "As a result, router and carrier Ethernet switch sales should continue strong as Ethernet and IP/MPLS traffic continues to grow, and at even faster rates than seen in a similar study we conducted last year."

Elsewhere, Infonetics said, additional penetration by broadband, increases in bandwidth usage and the move to IPTV, and triple- and quadruple-play service offerings will help drive Ethernet and IP/MPLS traffic growth over the next three to five years. Just how much will Ethernet traffic grow? By leaps and bounds, apparently: Carriers report 90 to 100 percent increases in Ethernet traffic in both 2006 and 2007, as well as 70 to 80 percent growth for IP/MPLS traffic.

Finally, Cisco Systems Inc., Juniper Networks and Alcatel-Lucent -- aka, the ubiquitous Gang of Three -- dominate the edge router segment, according to Infonetics. --Stephen Swoyer