Pseudo-wire

In computer networking and telecommunications, a pseudowire (or pseudo-wire) is an emulation of a point-to-point connection over a packet-switching network (PSN).

The pseudowire emulates the operation of a "transparent wire" carrying the service, but it is realized that this emulation will rarely be perfect. The service being carried over the "wire" may be Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, Ethernet or time-division multiplexing (TDM) while the packet network may be (MPLS), (IPv4 or IPv6), or Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol Version 3 (L2TPv3).

The first pseudowire specifications were the Martini draft for ATM pseudowires, and the TDMoIP draft for transport of E1/T1 over IP.

In 2001, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) set up the PWE3 working group, which was chartered to develop an architecture for service provider edge-to-edge pseudowires, and service-specific documents detailing the encapsulation techniques. Other standardization forums, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the MFA Forum, are also active in producing standards and implementation agreements for pseudowires.

There are now many pseudowire standards, the most important of which are IETF RFCs as well as ITU-T Recommendations:

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