MPLS VPNs or not?

Wed Aug 8 12:40:38 UTC 2001

| The other thing that is worrying is how many telco dinosaurs have
| come out of their hiding places claiming to be gurus on all things
| IP and MPLS because to them it looks like a telephone switch.

MPLS did two things very well:

	1. it killed Ipsilon and their traffic-driven shortcut routing
	2. it put the final nail in the coffin of ATM

Unfortunately, the side-effect of #2 is that there are lots of ATM
bellheads who have decided that the variable-length "cells", the
SVC model and the statmux gain are superior to ATM + ABR (no contest),
that therefore they should fully embrace and extend MPLS.

Fortunately, they haven't done this well enough to confuse enough
non-bellhead people into really _using_ this stuff for long.

Remember, in Imperial China small feet were so desirable that women's
feet were bound to keep them from growing normally, sometimes to the 
extent that they became unable to stand or walk without assistance.
These were the sexiest "small-foots".    In telco school, people's
heads are bound to keep them shaped like the pre-divestiture AT&T logo,
and the sexiest "bell-heads" are sadly unable to think without assistance.

Arguing that MPLS is the ONLY solution to VPNs or that (with or without
MPLS) RFC 2548 is the OPTIMAL control plane for VPNs across public
sections of the Internet is misguidance for these poor bellheads, and
is leading them astray.  What they really need is for the host security
folks to wake up and completely obliterate the "value-added" VPN industry.

| These people will cause you to lose hair 

Yeah, look at me!

	Sean.