The current MEF technical committee is currently focusing their work on four key broad areas of technical development work. The areas are: Management, Architecture, Protocol/Transport and Services. Each of these areas have sub-teams focused on delivering documents, frameworks, agreements and interoperability content to support the advanced adoption of Metro Ethernet as the network of choice on a global basis. Below are high level descriptions for each of the 4 major sub-committees and the work that they are focused on delivering.

Management - Mandated to develop Metro Ethernet operations, administration and maintenance (OA&M) requirements, models and definitions. This area is focused on defining and ensuring that network management is effective and interoperable across Metro Ethernet platforms. This includes normal network implementations that include multi-vendor solutions and integration into legacy network architectures. Work areas that have progressed substantially include Element Management Systems, Network Management and End-to-End OAM. As Metro Ethernet price per ports have substantially driven down the Capex cost, the simplified nature of managing Ethernet networks will also drive down Opex cost.

Architecture Mandated to develop an architectural reference model and set of common linguistic tools for the technical teams. This team defines the layered MEN architecture including the multiple base transport layers, the single Ethernet Services layer and the above application layers that ride on top of the Ethernet Services. Each layer has been further decomposed into the Adaptation, Connection and Termination elements. This critical area is completed with the UNI framework and will allow users to seamlessly access the Metro Ethernet network from the customer premise equipment to the core backbone.

Service Area Mandated to define Metro Ethernet services models, definitions and service parameters and attributes. The focus here is to define common services terminology along with the associate attributes and parameters to allow vendors, service providers and enterprise customers to speak in a common language for standardized Metro Ethernet implementations. Ethernet Line and Ethernet LAN are the top level agreed upon service categories with their associate attributes being defined throughout several whitepapers and reference documents.