mpls over microwave

Fri Feb 6 02:46:54 UTC 2015

Aviat Networks has recently released a microwave router with MPLS features, it's basically a router inside the microwave indoor unit.

What we've found what hurts with anything over microwave is when you're running n+n links over long haul and the RF modulation steps down on one of those links and decreases your bandwidth, the Aviat solution is apparently meant to solve this with the RF cards talking directly to the on-board router and giving your MPLS nodes a kick to shift traffic in the right direction.

-Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Naslund, Steve
Sent: Friday, 6 February 2015 10:39 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: mpls over microwave

We run Dragonwave systems and have no issues at all.  MPLS in itself doesn't make a difference since the gear is a straight Ethernet link.  Just make sure your gear handles your frame sizes and tagging and you should be good.  

As long as your radio link is engineered right you should have high reliability.  The key is having enough margin to maintain links during fades.  So for example our link runs at -34 dbm and our receivers are good down to about -65 dbm at this rate.  That gives us a roughly 35 dbm margin for degradation before the modems will change modulation a to a lower speed.  Here in chicago we have seen maybe a total of an hour of weather related fade in a 10 years period on a 20 mile link running 600 Mbps.   They are very popular for low latency since they actually have less latency than fiber.  The high frequency traders pay big bucks to get on the microwaves between markets because of that trait.  Microwaves through air are faster than photons in a fiber cable.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 5, 2015, at 4:03 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
> 
> Shouldn't really be any different as long as your gear supports the appropriate MTUs. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> http://www.ics-il.com
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> 
> From: "Scott Weeks" <surfer at mauigateway.com>
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Sent: Thursday, February 5, 2015 3:55:04 PM
> Subject: mpls over microwave
> 
> 
> 
> Anyone doing MPLS over microwave radios? Please share your experiences 
> on list or off.
> 
> scott
> 