Service Provider Mobility: What is Cisco’s

stance on MEF 22?

Posted by Robert Synnestvedt Jul 17, 2009

This week my Mobile Internet Odyssey comes back to Earth, grounded in a very
specific technical concern for today’s Mobile Internet interworking – MEF 22
compliance

For those of you already intimately aware of MEF 22, let me share the punch
line …

Cisco is an official member of Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and complies with the major
recommendations of MEF for Mobile networks, including MEF 22

For those of you who may be wondering “What is MEF 22?” please read on.

"Carrier Ethernet for Mobile Backhaul Implementation Agreement (IA)", or MEF 22 was
officially announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2009. Light Reading offers a
nice summary of this technical specification in the Feb 13, 2009 article MEF Standardizes
Backhaul
By offering a practical migration path to 3G
and 4G services, while preserving legacy
services revenue, the MEF 22 allows mobile
service providers to take part in two rapidly
expanding markets -- the delivery of high
bandwidth mobile applications and Carrier
Ethernet.

Generated by Jive SBS on 2009-12-07-07:00

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Service Provider Mobility: What is Cisco’s stance on MEF 22?

Cisco’s IP RAN Backhaul solution complies with MEF 22, and leverages the
use of IP/MPLS for the TDM gateway function as defined in the IP/MPLS Forum
IPMPLS 23 Specification. In fact Cisco’s IP RAN Backhaul solution was the First to
be certified by IP/MPLS Forum

In layman’s terms, Cisco’s IP RAN Solution connects multiple vendor radios,

with multiple vendor gateways, efficiently, reliably, and in compliance with best
practices and standards. The solution leverages the latest and greatest benefits
of Carrier Ethernet technology and design, including MEF 22 compliance. And
the solution is already live. Live deployments allow Cisco to offer valuable
lessons learned interoperating with all major mobile radio vendors, back to MEF.

For inquiries and clarifications of specific details related to MEF 22, please add your
comments to this post and/or launch a Discussion in our Cisco Mobility Community.

Note: For the MEF aficionados, Cisco does not support MEF 8 nor plan to get support /
certification for MEF 18 because MEF 18 relies on MEF 8 outdated circuit emulation
technique over Ethernet, initially designed for transporting enterprise PBX traffic. Cisco
uses IP MPLS and Pseudowires. The actual impairment tests in MEF 18 are almost
identical to the one found in the IP/MPLS Forum test suite for IP MPLS 23, where the only
difference between MEF8 , and a static MPLS Pseudowire is one byte in the ethertype
encapsulation. There is no point in supporting MEF8 just to have a byte in the ethertype be
set to a different value.
283 Views Tags: mef, mef_22, mef_8, mef_18, backhaul, mobile_backhaul, carrier_ethernet, metro_ethernet_forum

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Generated by Jive SBS on 2009-12-07-07:00

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