Fundamental Questions about Metro Ethernet

[Daniel Demers]

I have a few questions about Metro Ethernet that I have been trying to find for the past few days but everyone seems to be talking about finite items and not whole understanding. I apologize if this is elementrary for this forum but I was tasked with some work involving Metro Ethernet. 

1. Does Metro Ethernet have to stay within 1 provider? The company has 6 sites and from first conversation they made it sound like they have more than one ISP...which is Metro Ethernet is L2 I am confused how that would work if at all. 

2. Does Metro Ethernet have any direct relation with MPLS? From my understanding of MPLS it does not need Metro Ethernet? Also same final question as previous question.....can you run an MPLS network across multiple ISP's?

3. From my current (limited) understanding of Metro Ethernet it is a L2 broadcast domain that all sites are placed on...so why would a customer need VPN's with a Hub and Spoke design. Where the Data Center holds the servers and each remote location is a spoke and using Metro E with a VPN to access the Data Center resources.

Thank You.

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

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Posting

#1 No, but it might be difficult to get to providers to cooperate.  What might be easier is having more than one provider at one of sites and tie them together yourself.

#2 No, but Metro Ethernet might be provided on MPLS, if so, you'll just "see" it as Ethernet.

Regarding getting two MPLS providers to directly interoperate, see my answer to #1.

#3 For just moving traffic, you don't need VPN on top of Metro Ethernet.  However, it might be used to provide encryption or for other special considerations.