The edge aims to consolidate traffic from the access and deliver it to the core in an efficient manner. Optical Ethernet combines the familiarity and ubiquity of Ethernet networking with the speed of optical transport to overcome SONET/SDH's capacity constraints. Service providers are looking at Optical Ethernet to solve these problems, while reducing migration costs their customers face in moving to higher speed services. Optical Ethernet services use a native Ethernet interface for connectivity that drops connection costs substantially when compared to SONET/SDH. Ethernet interfaces significantly less than packet over SONET/SDH interfaces. Optical Ethernet also provides bandwidth flexibility with most implementations allowing for flexible bandwidth configuration in 8kb/s increments. This offers closer mapping of the service to bandwidth demands and enables tailored service pricing. Finally, Optical Ethernet devices typically can be reconfigured to higher bandwidths to 100 megabits, or even 1 Gigabits without truck rolls, without equipment upgrades and no scheduled service downtime. Thus drastically lowering on-going operations costs compared to SONET/SDH. Applications or service types have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) to insure optimal designs. System interoperability will continue to drive down the capital and operational costs of Optical Ethernet services while maintaining its flexibility advantages.

Applications or service types have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) to insure optimal designs. System interoperability will continue to drive down the capital and operational costs of Optical Ethernet services while maintaining its flexibility advantages.