8:10 AM -- Ethernet is a hard term to define in the carrier world. After all, modern implementations of Ethernet barely resemble what first showed up in office networks as the alternative to a medieval-sounding technology called Token Ring.

To date, hasn't carrier Ethernet been a new service that was sort of defined by its legacy connection?

Moving on from there, carriers now need to do more than simply provide a point-to-point Ethernet connection, regardless of the access media used.

The next generation of carrier Ethernet involves knowing more about what's riding on each connection, all over the network. And a next-gen carrier Ethernet would be one where the connection is controlled, or at least monitored closely, by the originating service provider, even across third-party networks. The service-level agreement would hold up, no matter where in the world the service itself extended.

The thing to note here is that this is coming from the carriers themselves. For more, check out this report on LRTV, where the topic of Carrier Ethernet 2.0 is discussed by executives from ANDA Networks Inc. , MEF , Global Cloud Xchange , and Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF):

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We haven't got all the kinks worked out in this new term. But it's important to start talking about it now, and defining this new generation of carrier Ethernet, even as the term "Ethernet" itself becomes less specific than it used to be.

— Phil Harvey, Editor, Light Reading