London to get citywide Ethernet LANs from BT

BT will offer Ethernet networks that span London, in a new virtual private LAN service (VPLS) that forms a stepping stone to its much-heralded 21st Century Network (21CN).

Alan Davis, worldwide head of BT Internet Services, said: "It's for anyone with five or six sites in the London area that wants to disseminate information between them. We believe this is the first launch of a citywide VPLS uncontended network."

The Ethernet Virtual LAN (Evlan) service extends BT's existing LAN/SAN extension service, which uses fibre connections to make Ethernet links between places up to 25km apart and is currently being rolled out to all London schools in a government-backed project.

Evlan increases the distance, and the number of connections possible, by linking sites through six major BT points of presence (POPs). This will allow BT to offer 10Mbps, 100Mbps or 1Gbps of uncontended LAN bandwidth between any two points, essentially extending anyone's LAN to anywhere within the M25. Davis said: "It’s dedicated Ethernet. The POPs are held together by native, Layer 2, dedicated Ethernet."

The price has not yet been determined but Davis said it was likely to be close to the current price of LAN/SAN, so a 10Mbps link might cost £10,000 to install, and then upwards of £5,000 per year rental. He said: "We can do a lower connection cost and higher rental. We are trying to match with the LAN /SAN portfolio." Companies who need connections installed further away from the POPs will pay a higher price to have fibre laid to their offices.

The service will be "21CN-ready", as it uses the same Alcatel switches that will be used in BT's 21CN, an all-IP backbone which will be rolled out over the next few years.

Although only available in London now, Evlan could be extended to another five cities once 21CN is built. Davis said: "Two of the POPs are co-located with MPLS POPs on the 21CN. If we needed to, we could hold metropolitan areas together with MPLS in the 21CN."

The service can also be extended to greater speeds, as optical techniques can run multiple channels on the fibres used, through dense wavelength digital multplexing, which sends signals on different colours.

Peter Judge writes for ZDNet UK