 What is MPLS?
From a technology perspective Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is quite complicated and requires a thorough knowledge of networking and routing to understand it in its entirety. Should you wish to learn about this powerful protocol in detail you can download a comprehensive PDF compiled from multiple sources that charts definitions, functionality, and requirements necessary for designing and implementing an MPLS based network available here:
Why MPLS?
Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a technology that allows you to design fast, efficient, and highly scalable IP networks for companies that have multiple office locations and need to share high priority, critical application data in an easy to manage and secure environment.
One of the key advantages that MPLS offers is Class and Quality of Service (QoS) support allowing the bandwidth intensive client-server applications like those implemented on Siebel, Oracle and Peoplesoft. Class and Quality of Service support is critical to the implementation of Voice over IP (VoIP) which is intolerant of jitter and latency. MPLS routes packets through the network utilizing “label switching” which allows you to tag or label high priority traffic and route those packets through your expensive high capacity circuits and route non-critical data through low cost, low capacity circuits which results in a single integrated IP network that is highly optimized.
MPLS has is the ability to create reliable VPNs without the use of VPN clients reducing the level of management and deployment complexity considerably. Which leads us to the discussion of traditional IPSEC based networking versus MPLS networking.
There are many arguments supporting one technology over the other but most agree that MPLS is the future and IPSEC is on the way out. This is mostly influenced by many trade magazines that tout MPLS as technology that has the highest potential for substantial cost savings. There are many articles and white papers available profiling several fortune 500 companies that have made the switch and have seen rapid return on investment and are currently reaping the benefits of MPLS. Although MPLS offers the highest potential for significant performance gains and cost saving, migrating to MPLS from traditional IPSEC technology requires careful planning and will render much of your IPSEC infrastructure equipment obsolete. California Telecom wants you to carefully weigh the options and consider.
If you are considering whether to implement an MPLS or IPSEC solutions here are some things to consider:
A traditional IPSEC network usually consists of a main site, backup main site, and multiple remote sites requiring extensive design, planning and rollout. Network design can be a long drawn out process and requires high cost expert resources. Equipment needs to be purchased, routing tables need to be populated, security policies configured, cryptographic algorithms decided, and so on. Even after that phase is complete, you still need to test and troubleshoot.
M P L S does away with all of those headaches. You don’t need to purchase any equipment and you don’t need to understand security because all security is managed by California Telecom and is part of the MPLS backbone. Implementing private network that is MPLS based is simple and straightforward. You connect your sites in a basic “point to point” configuration. Edge routers connect your main, backup and remote sites to the M P L S network and you’re done. All configuration and management is done by California Telecom and is monitored 24/7/365.
VPLS
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MPLS/VPN Hybrid Solutions |
While MPLS is easy to implement there are some design issues to be concerned about. MPLS alone does not give your site internet access. For that you need to implement MPLS + I.
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MPLS benefit with Internet |
While with MPLS + I you may have just solved your site-to-site connectivity issues and your Internet access, you now have another potential headache, which is that all sites are now accessing the Internet over the same pipe as your private site-to-site traffic. This is only an issue if someone at a remote site downloads a huge MP3 file and at the same time that your CEO is downloading his latest sales forecast report from that same branch office. Whoops. So M P L S definitely has a double edge to it when you find yourself sharing the same pipe for Internet and site-to-site critical data transfers. To deal with this problem you can increase your bandwidth to the M P L S network, or apply Quality of Service (QoS) to the packets.
If you have voice and video traffic flowing over your MPLS network, that can add another wrinkle. You need to start allocating bandwidth and reserving, differentiating and prioritizing your traffic. Voice is first, video is second, site-to-site is third, internet is last. That means you “mark packets” at your core switch and/or edge routers. Suddenly MPLS doesn’t seem so simple once you factor in data classification and QoS. But it still beats having to purchase $5k per site for a fancy firewall doing IPsec. The key is to take advantage of California Telecoms expertise and experience in working with you in designing a network that suits your unique business needs. Our experience will point out potential issues that you may not even be aware of or thought about.
What does an MPLS network look like?
| Your Network With MPLS |
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The beauty of M P L S is that it eliminates multiple routers, firewalls and IT management headaches from all of the remote locations by putting control and management of the entire network into one center, usually Headquarters.
| Your Network Without MPLS |
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To accomplish anything close to an M P L S network right now is a muddle of routers, firewalls, tunnels involving massive amounts of IT management at EVERY location within the network. Relying on old technology is costly, less efficient, less scalable and much harder to manage. |
