In 2001, the
IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and ...
set up the
pseudowire emulation edge to edge
working group
A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...
, and this group was given the acronym PWE3 (the 3 standing for the third power of E, i.e. EEE). The working group was chartered to develop an architecture for service provider edge-to-edge PWs, and service-specific documents detailing the encapsulation techniques.
In
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...
and
telecommunications
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...
, a pseudowire (PW) is an emulation of a native service over a
packet-switched network
In telecommunications, packet switching is a method of grouping data into '' packets'' that are transmitted over a digital network. Packets are made of a header and a payload. Data in the header is used by networking hardware to direct the pac ...
(PSN). The native service may be
ATM
ATM or atm often refers to:
* Atmosphere (unit) or atm, a unit of atmospheric pressure
* Automated teller machine, a cash dispenser or cash machine
ATM or atm may also refer to:
Computing
* ATM (computer), a ZX Spectrum clone developed in Mo ...
,
Frame Relay
Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Originally designed for transport across Integrated ...
,
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...
, low-rate
TDM, or
SONET/SDH
Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting ...
, while the PSN may be
MPLS
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses. Whereas network addresses identify endpoints the labels identif ...
,
IP (either IPv4 or IPv6), or
L2TPv3
Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol version 3 is an IETF standard related to L2TP that can be used as an alternative protocol to Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for encapsulation of multiprotocol Layer 2 communications traffic over IP networks. ...
.
The working group chairs were originally Danny McPherson and Luca Martini,
but following Martini's resignation Stewart Bryant became co-chair.
External links
* Charter for PWE3 Working Group : http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/pwe3/charter/
Computer network organizations