The articles in this feature topic cover some of the following topics: an overview of the activity in developing Ethernet solutions in standards bodies; an economic perspective suggesting how a carrier might choose to partition its network to optimize cost and functionality, and also demonstrating how carrier scale Ethernet could complement and interoperate with other technologies; a tutorial on work in the IEEE 802.1 committee related to provider backbone bridging (PBB) and discussion of PBB-TE (PBB with traffic engineering);contrasting approaches to implementing control planes for Ethernet; and a description of Synchronous Ethernet standards being developed to allow transportation of synchronization information over Ethernet.