Description Ethernet Transport Networks, Architectures of NetworkingMain Objectives“Low cost, scalable and efficient networks will make it possible to develop a wide range of innovative applications, and generate new opportunities for high value products and services.”Most of today’s European communications transport networks are based on Legacy TDM (SDH) technology. A new generation of packet transport infrastructure based on the use of Ethernet technology is now emerging in many European countries, however there are still many challenges some of which will be addressed by ETNA. The Carrier Ethernet equipment market is on the rise. The Metropolitan Networks market is expected to reach over €2.5 billion by 2010. The estimate is that until 2010, 5 billion subscribers will be connected in an “always-on” fashion to the network. A huge potential also exists for deployment of Carrier Ethernet Networks as national backbones. The objective of ETNA is to design, analyze and validate future metro and core networks based on Ethernet technology. The goal is to propose the architecture of a low cost pan-European Ethernet network capable of serving millions of subscribers, provide common, reliable and secure transport architecture for different current and future network services. The successful development of such networks will shape future developments of information and communication technologies and deliver significant benefits for European citizens and business. Low cost, scalable and efficient Ethernet transport networks will enable the development of a wide range of innovative applications and will create new opportunities for high value products and services. The ETNA consortium will perform analysis and identification of the requirements for new and innovative nation-wide Ethernet networks, research and develop architectures necessary to operate these networks in a cost-effective manner, design the network capabilities to deliver services to residential, business and mobile subscribers and investigate techno-economic models of such architectures.  Technical ApproachThe ETNA project will run over a two year period. The project consists of 3 major parts – i) vision of the end-to-end network focusing on the role of the Ethernet, ii) network architecture which complements and extends existing approaches and iii) prototyping, field testing and standardization of the new architecture approach. The ETNA work plan is parallelized. There are 7 Work Packages. After a definition phase (WP1) the requirements for the new network are sufficiently defined to start the basic development. Meanwhile the architectural work package (WP2) delivers the framework for the development of the various technological modules (WP3 and WP4). WP5 will combine two prototypes into one operational prototype. In the last phase of the project WP6 collects and guides the inputs from the technological work packages to include all results in a field trial and to verify the feasibility of the next generation of Ethernet. Dissemination and exploitation activities such as participation in internal and external workshops and submission of papers to conferences and journals and standardization activities will be done throughout the duration of the project.