IEEE 802.1ad is an Ethernet networking standard. It is as an amendment to IEEE standard IEEE 802.1Q-1998 and was incorporated into the base 802.1Q standard in 2011. The technique specified by the standard is known as provider bridging and stacked VLANs and informally as QinQ. The original 802.1Q specification allows a single virtual local area network (VLAN) header to be inserted into an Ethernet frame. QinQ allows multiple VLAN tags to be inserted into a single frame, an essential capability for implementing Metro Ethernet.