Mission-critical industries — from power utilities to oil and gas drilling to public transport and public safety — rely on resilient, secure, service-aware networks to provide the essential communications for their daily operations. New mission-critical applications, developed on powerful computing platforms, are becoming IP/Ethernet-based and are more bandwidth-intensive, providing richer information to the head end. Network operators are considering cost-effective technologies that can fulfill legacy and new application requirements without degrading performance or reliability.