Anyone here have an MPLS infrastructure?

[Rogue]

We're looking at a complete network upgrade in the coming year which will enable MPLS across our entire network. Does anyone here use MPLS in their network and what does it offer over current similar network technologies? Links to good articles would be greatly appreciated.

Info on DWDM would also help me as well.

 

[tthompson]

http://www.mplsrc.com/

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/732/Tech/mpls/

We don't use it but it looks pretty good. I think many service providers are moving that way, oe of our Telcos has implemented it.

 

[spidey07]

Yes. All across north america.

What are you trying to do?

-ps- the providers still haven't totally got their act together. I'd wait another year.

From a technolgy perspective it is far supior to frame. But the guarantees/SLAs are not realistic/achievable.

 

[Rogue]

The upgrade is part of a major shift within DoD as part of this project:

http://www.disa.mil/main/prodsol/gig_be.html

Our network core will be fully MPLS enabled to allow for basically an unlimited amount of service provider possibilities. Could MPLS tagging be equated with being the bastard child of VPN and VLAN without the IP requirement?

 

[ScottMac]

There's actually two general modes for MPLS.

The one usually implemented (I believe) requires no real re-configuration at the customer side. The DLCIs you have mappend into the cloud are "labeled" (at the cloud) and are forwarded according to the features enabled for that label.

The other mode replaces all of your layer 2 DLCIs with a single VPN that terminates at the cloud. The gateway router at your end tags the traffic before passing it to the cloud (the tags replace the segregation by DLCI for your virtual circuits). The clooud takes your tagged traffic and routes it according to the features enabled for that label.

What features? Things like QOS, or specific paths (i.e., redundant paths, one takes the Northern route, one takes the Southern route).

From a customer perspective, most will want it for the QOS - to guarantee sufficient bandwidth to maintain a decent VoIP, video conference, or Video-on-Demand (VoD) circuit.

From a private backbone or carrier level perspective, MPLS provides a mechanism for "Traffic Engineering" that permits a specific Label Switched Path to be defined for any give label passing through the system.

There are some other advantages, but end-to-end QOS and Treffic Engineering are (usually) the top two bullets.

FWIW

Scott

 

[KLin]

My company is going to be moving to an MPLS WAN from an IP/VPN WAN to improve performance for our Cisco VoiP phones in a few months.

 

[SaigonK]

I have one all over the world, China, Singapore, US, Europe...what do you want ot know?

 

[SaigonK]

Be wary when choosing an provider, as you can imagine most charge for COS (AT&T) changes and additions.

 

[cmetz]

Rogue, NO! NO! NO!

From everything I've seen of MPLS, I'd suggest looking at other options. Though certainly at a very wide area / high bandwidth scale, you may not have other good options. If you don't, consider a technology that presents you with an emulated Ethernet interface and makes all the MPLS stuff the carrier's problem.

As far as I can tell, MPLS is just ATM repackaged and renamed. SSDD.

 

[Rogue]

Originally posted by: cmetz
Rogue, NO! NO! NO!

From everything I've seen of MPLS, I'd suggest looking at other options. Though certainly at a very wide area / high bandwidth scale, you may not have other good options. If you don't, consider a technology that presents you with an emulated Ethernet interface and makes all the MPLS stuff the carrier's problem.

As far as I can tell, MPLS is just ATM repackaged and renamed. SSDD.

Not my choice man, look at the link I posted. We're talking DISA here, top level planning within DoD network architecture. The military is moving away from leased lines an purchasing dark fiber to create their own network infrastructure. Our current network core is all Layer2/3 switched with 1Gb fiber backbones to each location on the MAN. I'm guessing that if DoD is looking at MPLS, there must be some benefit to it. I don't have much of a choice in the matter honestly, I just need more information.