The MFA Forum, a group formed from the merger of three other groups – the ATM Forum, the Frame Relay Forum and the MPLS Forum – is changing its name once more and sharpening its focus. The new IP/MPLS Forum will hone a common vision of IP/MPLS-based solutions and seek to bring service providers and equipment vendors together on that vision.

The latest name change is an acknowledgement that the previous name selection was a flawed compromise to appease all three groups, even as the technology represented by two of them – ATM and Frame Relay – was rapidly becoming irrelevant. That put severe marketing restrictions on the group, said Dave Parks, marketing committee chair and senior product marketing manager for Ciena.

“One of the reasons for this new name is that part of the forum’s mission is not just MPLS but also IP, as it relates to MPLS,” he said. “It has become a standard term, also focused on both of those technologies, not just MPLS.”

The group will be engaged in driving global adoption of IP/MPLS standards and particularly involved in aiding the migration of ATM and frame legacy networks to IP/MPLS. Its activities will include the creation of global implementation agreements and promoting interoperability among both vendors and service providers.

Key to the latter is the finalization, expected soon, of an IP/MPLS Inter-Carrier Interconnect (ICI) standard, which will enable service providers to link their networks in a way that delivers full IP/MPLS functionality to their customers.

“No service provider’s network is ubiquitous,” Parks said. “If you are selling customers a VPN based on an MPLS network, what happens when the customer has a location out of their region? There is another service provider there, and the ICI standard allows service providers to interconnect their MPLS networks with MPLS rather than having to back down to some other technology like Ethernet and lose some of the functionality.”

IP/MPLS has taken something of a back seat to Ethernet in recent months as the latter is being touted as the be-all, end-all of carrier services, but Parks views the two as complementary rather than competitive and says his group is working closely with the Metro Ethernet Forum.

“Ethernet will be a tremendous vehicle to getting IP /MPLS adopted,” he said. “IP/MPLS already has a strong presence in the core; Ethernet is in the metro and at the edge. Ethernet often struggles with [operations, administration and maintenance] and the ability to support non-Ethernet protocols. MPLS goes a long way to help that out [with] MPLS OAM and our pseudowire technology. A lot of times, service providers invest in them simultaneously because MPLS is deployed over the top of Ethernet. It is IP traffic that is driving Ethernet, so the two are complementary.”

Also on tap in the near term for the IP/MPLS Forum is a standard for IP/MPLS wireless backhaul networks aimed at wireless carriers upgrading to next-generation wireless nets to support mobile data.