Fwd: Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use

Fri Jul 23 04:01:49 UTC 2004

Interesting migration, albeit good sense in many regards.

FYI,

- ferg

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND JOANIE WEXLER ON WIDE 
AREA NETWORKING
07/22/04
Today's focus:  Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use

[snip]

Today's focus:  Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use

By Steve Taylor and Joanie Wexler

Early results of a Webtorials survey about WAN service usage 
plans conducted in May 2004 and sponsored by Network Physics 
turned up some interesting results. In particular, there is a 
strong indicator that enterprises are planning fairly broad 
adoption of MPLS-based VPN services in the next 18 months.

Some of that growth in MPLS VPN adoption will be at the expense 
of traditional frame-relay network services. This is not because 
of dissatisfaction with those services but rather it is the 
nature of the applications to be supported that seems to be 
changing.

Enhanced quality of service (QoS) guarantees, especially for 
converged networking applications such as VoIP, plus a greater 
degree of meshed networking to support such applications, were 
shown to be particularly strong drivers, for example. Businesses 
generally don't just build new networks simply because they're 
impressed by the idea of QoS or meshed topologies. They build 
networks to support the needs of the applications they run.

Clearly, these "network layer" considerations point to the rapid 
adoption of converged networking on a widespread basis.  But 
widespread adoption isn't necessarily a good idea unless the 
newly adopted networking capabilities are manageable.

Difficulty with managing MPLS ranks among four of the top six 
obstacles to MPLS adoption at the current time. However, the 
Webtorials survey results showed that management of the newly 
deployed MPLS-based VPN is expected to be at least as good as - 
and hopefully better than - current capabilities for legacy 
networks. Technically speaking, this is a reasonable 
expectation, so one may be quite hopeful that the deployed 
capabilities will indeed take advantage of the enhanced 
technology.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

2004 MPLS-Based IP VPNs Survey Results Abstract
http://www.webtorials.com/abstracts/MPLSSurvey2004.htm

MPLS snowballing, alliance says
The Edge, 06/02/03
http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2003/0602mplsall.html

MPLS adds lift to Boeing net
Network World, 06/07/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0607boeing.html

Group tackles interoperability to give MPLS needed boost
Network World, 07/19/04
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/071904forums.html

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg at netzero.net or
 fergdawg at sbcglobal.net