Carrier Ethernet is a hot topic at this week's NXTcomm conference in Las Vegas, with three major vendors offering enhancements to their product families.

Alcatel-Lucent unveiled integration of IEEE 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) technologies to increase the scale and reach of carrier metro Ethernet VPN services. These capabilities are offered on Alcatel-Lucent's 7750 and 7710 Service Routers, and 7450 Ethernet Services Switch.

Meanwhile, Juniper Networks expanded the range of interface cards for its MX-series portfolio of Ethernet Services Routers with the addition of three interchangeable dense port concentrator (DPC) modules. These modules are designed to support a wider range of Ethernet network architectures in both the enterprise and service provider markets.

And Tellabs enhanced its 8800 multiservice router series with Ethernet operations, administration, maintenance and provisioning (OAM&P) functionality and service-level monitoring.

The announcements follow Ericsson's recent Carrier Ethernet debut, when its Redback Networks subsidiary entered the burgeoning market with its first Ethernet switch. Some analysts project the current $2.5 billion market to approach $5 billion in four years.

Alcatel-Lucent's integrated PBB/VPLS software is designed to scale multipoint metro Ethernet service networks within and beyond metro boundaries by combining the MAC address "hiding" capabilities of PBB with the traffic engineering and convergence characteristics of VPLS and MPLS. Alcatel-Lucent is collaborating with other vendors and service providers on an IETF draft RFC, which defines VPLS extensions for PBB.

The company also unveiled an IPSec-Integrated Services Adapter, which lets service providers include secure business VPN service options for remote-access to L3 VPNs, site-to-site and network infrastructure services, Alcatel-Lucent says.

Other capabilities introduced this week on the Alcatel-Lucent Service Router portfolio include support for IEEE Carrier Ethernet Operation Assurance and Management (OA&M) standards; and enhancements to its 5620 Service Aware Manager and 5650 Control Plane Access Manager for provisioning and managing Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN services in a uniform manner.