Subject: I-D ACTION:draft-shah-extreme-eaps-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 07:07:49 -0500

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title		: Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS), 
                          Version 1
	Author(s)	: S. Shah, M. Yip
	Filename	: draft-shah-extreme-eaps-00.txt
	Pages		: 7
	Date		: 2002-12-18
	
This document describes the Ethernet Automatic Protection
Switching (EAPS) (TM) technology invented by Extreme Networks to
better support operators of Ethernet MAN Rings.  Many network
operators have been moving to Ethernet technology from SONET
technology in MANs because of the much better value proposition of the
Ethernet technology.
Many Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) have a ring topology,
as the fibre runs.  The Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching
technology described here works well in ring topologies for MANs or
large campus networks.
Also, most MAN operators want to minimise the recovery time in
the event a fibre cut occurs.  The Spanning Tree Protocol can take as
long as 40 seconds to converge in the event of a topology change.  The
newer Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol is considerably faster, however its
convergence time is still dependent upon the number of notes in the ring.
Both STP and RSTP limit the number of nodes in the ring. The Ethernet
Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) technology described here
converges in less than one second, often in less than 100 milliseconds.
EAPS technology does not limit the number of nodes in the ring, and the
convergence time is independent of the number of nodes.

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