The MEF gets cloudy: The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) is preparing an "earth-shattering" announcement regarding Carrier Ethernet 2.0 and cloud services in the near future. This is likely to be very closely related to the bandwidth-on-demand trend, as service providers figure how they can provide flexible Ethernet services that can be turned up and down to match the way in which their enterprise users use cloud-based resources and applications.

SDN isn't a BGP killer: Nicolas "Nico" Fischbach, director of Network Platform & Strategy and Architecture at Colt Technology Services Group Ltd., put some minds at rest about the potential impact of SDN. "People have been saying there will be no BGP [border gateway protocol] and that IP networks as we know them will go away. That is NUTS!" he proclaimed. "BGP will never go away. But it may be combined with something else, possible OpenFlow but there are lots of options," added the Colt man. Fischbach is a man worth listening to, as Colt has been checking out SDN use cases to figure out any potential advantages and is very active in the network functions virtualization (NFV) Industry Specifications Group formed in late 2012 under the auspices of European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). (See Carriers Peer Into Virtual World.)

Does OpenFlow have a shelf life? Fischbach soon got into his stride once he was up on stage, questioning whether SDN's poster-child protocol OpenFlow will be around for long. "I'm not sure about the future of OpenFlow as a protocol. I'm not sure it's the SDN Holy Grail." Plenty of speakers, including Rafael Francis from Cyan Inc., noted that there are other tools that will be utilized in SDN architectures.

Where are the carrier class OpenFlow products? There was no stopping the day's most compelling speaker. Fischbach told conference delegates that while there is plenty of market noise around OpenFlow products, "carrier-class OpenFlow switches are not GA [generally available]." That sounds like an invitation for some vendors to at least try to prove him wrong…

Vendors have been distracted by SDN: Fischbach again. Colt's new network architecture includes an integrated packet/optical core, which isn't quite fully deployed yet because the vendor community is lagging behind its timelines by about two years. SDN has "caused chaos… [vendors] have jumped on the bandwagon and change their positioning" to ensure they have a SDN story.

Major carriers are serious about NFV: Network functions virtualization (NFV) isn't just something the ETSI group's members are meeting and talking about – they're checking out whether dedicated telecom products with the traditional integrated hardware/software combination can be replaced with a combination of centralized applications, virtualization software and distributed off-the-shelf servers. And according to Karl-Heinz Nenner, senior architect at Deutsche Telekom AG, the carriers are finding that existing server technology is robust enough for deployment in an NFV architecture.

SDN + CE 2.0 is the future: Heavy Reading's Stan Hubbard has seen the future of Carrier Ethernet services and, if SDN capabilities are indeed introduced into carrier networks alongside the enhanced management capabilities provided by Carrier Ethernet 2.0 specifications, users will be offered network-as-a-service options within a few years. CE 2.0 specifications are already enhancing performance management capabilities, added Hubbard.

Say hello to 'Anywhereization': We're not sure how hot this term, being used extensively by the TeliaSonera International Carrier (TIC) team, will be, but it encapsulates what all the major operators are seeing and having to deal with – that customers are demanding flexible, increasingly high-bandwidth services anywhere, any time and on any device. The days of fixed rate services over point-to-point connections are disappearing…

He called himself 'The Dude': Tata Communications Ltd. senior director and head of Ethernet Product Management, Henry Bohannon, has made the Light Reading team very happy. "My favorite movie of all time is The Big Lebowski," he told me Tuesday afternoon. We believe he had a rug and it really tied his room together.

— Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading