Pseudowire solutions began quietly as a way to transport legacy services over operators’ Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) cores. Today, however, pseudowires are proliferating and increasing in importance, despite winning the Light Reading award for the most ugly and opaque marketing term in telecom history.

So what are pseudowires all about? Are they really:

• A true end-to-end solution for operators?
• A key solution for convergence, beyond Layer 2 services?
• Transforming the access network by tightly integrating it with the core?
• Providing a platform for new services (such as Virtual Private LAN Service), and not just for the transport of legacy services?

Because "pseudowire" is a pretty new term commercially (although it has been around in the IETF for a couple of years or so) there’s quite a lot confusion over what they can be used for and what their real significance is. This Light Reading report explains the basics and shows how pseudowires are key to such applications as:

• Metro Ethernet over MPLS
• Multiservice access
• MSO commercial services
• Multiservice backhaul
• Mobile applications
• FTTP backhaul

Here’s a hyperlinked contents list:

• Pseudowire Basics
  Anything-over-packets means real convergence
  
  
• Pseudowire Evolution
  It's more and more deployable
  
  
• Pseudowire Applications I
  Lots and lots of useful apps...
  
  
• Pseudowire Applications II
  ...and not just for plain vanilla carriers
  
  

Webinar

This report was previewed in a Webinar moderated by Scott Clavenna, Chief Analyst, Heavy Reading. Sponsored by Axerra Networks Inc., Mangrove Systems Inc., and Overture Networks Inc., it may be viewed free of charge in our Webinar archives by clicking here.

Background Reading on Light Reading

• Column: Supercomm Review
• News Wire Feed: Patapsco Offers ISDN Over IP Tunneling
• Column: How Far Can MPLS Go?
• Column: How About a Dry Martini?

Related Light Reading Webinar archives

• Pseudowire Aggregation & Multiservice Access
• Pseudowire Solutions for True Convergence

Related Heavy Reading reports

• Pseudowires and the Future of Transport and Access Networks

— Tim Hills is a freelance telecommunications writer and journalist. He's a regular author of Light Reading reports.