ETNA Objectives Most of today’s European communications transport networks are based on Legacy TDM (SDH) technology. A new generation of packet transport infrastructure based on 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 by 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 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 composed of 7 parallel 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 combines 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 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.