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 MPLS Technology

Written by: RealTimeT1.com - Mar 15, 2010

During the last few years, MPLS has grown at an amazing pace and more and more providers are replacing frame relay with the MPLS networks. More and more businesses are using MPLS network for their needs to connect their locations together on a private network. There are numerous applications that can take advantage of this latest technology in being able to prioritize data packets by assigning labels to them.

There are lots of products that have the label MPLS, so one needs to be careful of the types of services available. There are several partial implementations (Cisco included) of the MPLS specifications, many of which do not give the full range of QoS and support for carrying diverse services at the same time. For multi-service networks MPLS services provided by the major providers is most likely the best options to consider.

MPLS service is the 'Now' Generation of backbone technology. It is the number one service offering for most Global Telco's, not to mention the main focus of Vendors in the US. In Europe and Asia, it is already the technology of choice for most new WAN implementations.

It is always safer to compare the business cases for MPLS and competing legacy technologies when considering a change. Often the Service Providers push customers into MPLS solutions because it is fashionable and the margins are better for them as they can bundle multiple services with it (Data and VOIP plus enhanced network monitoring tools etc). The overall MPLS costs for a customer will depend on several factors:

1. existing and future bandwidth requirements,
2. the need to use bandwidth on demand,
3. geographical spread of wide area networks (distance from the exchange and regulatory restrictions). The further the locations, the more advantageous it is to have MPLS connections, since they're distant insensitive.

MPLS network is truly becoming the technology for today's WAN. With the refresh of network infrastructure now better built into operating budgets, the fact that VOIP, videoconferencing and convergence of legacy and current data networks are no longer a leap of faith, more and more businesses migrating to MPLS solutions in the next year and beyond.

Every major bandwidth provider in the US is pushing MPLS. In fact, Sprint, a major Tier 1 provider, is abandoning the frame relay service at the end of the year and getting everyone on their MPLS network.

In order to take full advantage of the MPLS technology, MPLS service is required at every site. ALL MPLS offerings allow businesses that previously did not have a full meshed network to now have the benefits of one. This plays well into most Disaster Recovery plans too. All locations can interact with one another without additional cost like frame relay .

MPLS service includes CoS (class of service). This is very useful if you have VOIP or run applications such as videoconferencing, ERP, CRM, etc.

For MPLS connections to be most effective, your entire route from point A to point B has to be MPLS enabled. So given locations, let's say location A in Los Angeles and location B in Chicago, this entire path from both locations HAVE to be MPLS enabled. Otherwise, the packet markings are useless.

We have helped numerous companies migrate from frame relay or VPN to MPLS, and can do the same for your company as well. You can choose to connect your various locations with MPLS speeds usually starting at 1.5 mbps to 45 mbps (T1 speed to T3/DS3 bandwidth) and faster.