VPLS over MPLS Connects Locations Worldwide

MPLS networks are replacing older technologies such as frame relay and TDM point to point connections. It’s all part of the switchover from switched circuit to packet switched networks as a realization that legacy telephone traffic plays a minor role in worldwide voice, data and video communications.

MPLS is becoming the WAN of choice because of its versatility. The MP of MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol. MPLS networks aren’t fussy about the type of traffic they transport. Each packet gets a wrapper label and the LS or Label Switching makes sure it gets from source to destination intact.

There’s another networking technology that is also coming on strong. That is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. VPLS is an Ethernet WAN service that connects multiple company LANs as if they were one much larger LAN that includes sites all over the world.

“That’s it,” you say. “I want VPLS not MPLS.”

Ah, not so fast. VPLS isn’t a network by itself. It needs MPLS networks to transport it. VPLS is a service running on MPLS. It’s one of those multi-protocols that MPLS networks carry so well.

Technically, VPLS uses a concept called pseudo-wires. Pseudo what? The name suggests what this is. It’s the emulation of a wired connection through a network. A real wire would be used for point to point private line service. You would lease the line and it would be “nailed up” or dedicated to your exclusive use for the duration of the lease. Pseudo wires are a way to establish private lines within packet switched networks. The idea is to create a transparent wire that can be used to carry a service from point A to point B.

Think of a pseudo-wire just like a length of Ethernet cable on your LAN. The wire doesn’t interfere with your protocol. The pseudo-wire doesn’t interfere with your protocol on the WAN. By establishing pseudo-wires through the MPLS network, it is possible to string virtual LAN wires hundreds or thousands of miles long. This is one of the tricks behind extending your LAN beyond the boundary lines of your property.

The other trick is for the network to emulate a switch or bridge to create a meshed network so that all locations can communicate as if they were on a bridged LAN. VPLS is a multi-point service. If all you wanted to do is connect two locations, you’d probably just get Ethernet Line Service using a pseudowire through the MPLS network.

The MPLS network can be thought of as a cloud that transports data and creates a multipoint switched network for interconnecting two or more business LANs. That can be anywhere from a few locations in the same state up to hundreds or thousands of locations across the globe. Because it is a cloud, you don’t have to worry about how the packets get from anywhere to anywhere. That’s the network provider’s job. All you need to do is get to that cloud from wherever you need a connection.

Those “last mile” connections can be a variety of protocols and a variety of bandwidths. If you want VPLS service, you’ll need to have Ethernet connections in the last mile. Those can be Ethernet over Copper, Ethernet over Fiber, Even Ethernet over DS1 or DS3 in situations where EoC isn’t available.

This brings up another option. If you don’t need layer 2 connectivity between LANs and simply want a WAN connection to transfer files between locations, you can set up a MPLS VPN service. This can use layer 3 routing just like you might create with a collection of private lines or over the Internet. One advantage is that you can use any protocol connectivity, such as T1 lines, DSL, SONET fiber optic and so on. Each location can have a different type of connection. The network will accept your packets, wrap them in MPLS labels and get them where they are supposed to go.

How about your WAN connectivity? Could you do better regarding bandwidth, quality of service or cost? Get competitive quotes for VPLS over MPLS and MPLS VPN network services to check available options for your business locations.




Note: World map graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

IP WAN over MPLS Advantages

When we think of IP wide area networks, the first thing that comes to mind is the Internet. While the Internet does have almost universal connectivity and modest cost to access, there are some serious issues when it comes to business applications. Bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss have no guarantees and few expectations. Security is a joke. But aren’t other methods to interconnect business locations costly and hard to manage?

It is possible to set up a private IP network that lets you use your familiar IP addressing schemes and avoid encryption, firewalls, tunnels, and additional hardware. You’ll gain a performance advantage compared to using VPN techniques over the Internet and save yourself the administrative headaches of trying to manage a WAN with inherently indeterminate characteristics. Who offers something like this? It’s TelePacific, one of the nation’s largest competitive carriers.

TelePacific’s 1Net is an IP VPN running on a private MPLS network, not the Internet. Since MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching can transport almost any protocol, it can be set up to mimic the Internet while keeping your data private. Only the locations that you set up can exchange traffic. No one outside of your user group can capture or view your data. You’ll have any to any connectivity within the group with security sufficient to address HIPPA or similar government regulations.

In fact, TelePacific set up just such a private IP Network for a medical imaging organization with 6 locations. They use it to transport patients’ private medical records among their location. Referring physicians can access patient imaging results within hours at their own computers. The system is also used for claims processing, patient scheduling and registration. Interestingly, this system also allows dedicated Internet access through a single firewall at corporate headquarters.

The TelePacific 1Net IP VPN has both cost and performance advantages over other secure networking solutions, including private line, ATM and Frame Relay. You can specify up to six different Classes of Service (CoS) to support sensitive real-time services such as VoIP telephone and teleconferencing. On Net, latency for all CoS is specified at 50 msec. That rises to just 100 msec for extended reach locations off the TelePacific network but still within the US. Network availability is 99.999% (5 nines) both on and off network locations.

The Classes of Service are CoS 1 for VoIP real time traffic, CoS2 for video conferencing and real time data traffic, CoS3 for high priority, delay sensitive business data like Ecommerce and Citrix, CoS4 for medium priority delay-sensisitive business data such as CRM and WebEx, CoS5 for general less delay sensitive business data like ERP, and CoS6 for best effort traffic with no prioritization. That’s typically Email and FTP.

Are you cringing at the cost and effort involved in linking your business locations by private lines or frustrated by the highly variable performance and difficulty in securing the Internet? Perhaps the best solution for your business needs is a private IP VPN based on MPLS networking. Check prices and features to compare with your other choices.



Note: MPLS network diagram courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Multi-Carrier WAN MPLS Solution

Businesses that want to link their many far-flung locations have had several options available. They could set up their own private point to point lines, go with a Frame Relay network or sign up for MPLS network service. Which of these offers the best cost solution? Let’s have a look.

When companies and small and growing, the temptation is to grow the network along with the company. If there are only two locations, the logical move is to order a point to point T1 line or higher bandwidth service. This directly connects the new locations with dedicated private bandwidth. When another location is set up, add another private line back to headquarters. If you want the two remote locations to talk directly, you can add a third private line between them.

You can see how costs grow rather quickly when you try to create a mesh network using dedicated private lines. Pretty soon you have a rats nest of connections and a soaring telecom bill. What happens then is someone in IT decides that it makes more sense to have only one private line to each location and arrange them in a star network with headquarters at the center. The headquarters router will take care of directing traffic among all locations. This is better, but you are still paying more than necessary.

That conundrum is what led to the development of Frame Relay networks. The idea is that a shared WAN network is more cost effective than every company creating its own private WAN. The Frame Relay network is one of the original clouds. You simply connected to the network from each of your locations and long haul traffic was routed through the cloud. If a cloud is running correctly, you have no sense that there is other traffic on the network while you are using it.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching takes the concept of Frame Relay and improves upon it. Frame Relay networks reached the height of their popularity in an era where bandwidth demands were generally lower and most traffic was data packets. MPLS is designed around fiber optic core networks with a regional or nationwide footprint. There are class of service tags included in the labels that encapsulate the user packets. These ensure that time sensitive applications like VoIP telephony or video conferencing get the special treatment they need to work successfully. As the name implies, MPLS can transport any protocol. Multiple customers can transport different protocols simultaneously and they won’t interfere.

Since MPLS networks can handle any protocol, have enormous bandwidth at their disposal and have inherent security because of the proprietary nature of the network technology, doesn’t it make perfect sense to connect to an MPLS network to link business locations?

Yes it does. Your best cost solution for a given performance level across more than two locations is likely to be an MPLS network solution. The one fly in the ointment is that any given MPLS network doesn’t necessarily go everywhere you want it to. You may be able to connect some of your locations to the network but not others. There are some massive MPLS networks that can connect nearly everywhere, but they can also command top dollar. Is there a better solution?

The approach that can give you the connectivity you need with at the best pricing is a multi-carrier or meshed MPLS network. It’s a network of networks. In other words, several MPLS networks are joined to cover all of your business locations at the best price point for each.

Where do you find this type of service? Obviously, contacting any particular carrier will only get you access to their MPLS network. If you want to interconnect them, you have the tricky issue of network to network interfacing. That’s a job better left to telecom network specialists. One company, AireSpring, has the expertise to make this happen and the carrier relationships to gain access.

Does your company need to interconnect multiple business locations? Telecom broker Telarus has access to the best rates on MPLS networks, including Meshed MPLS from AireSpring. Get availability and pricing for MPLS solutions. You are probably spending too much right now.

MPLS Point to Point Alternative

The traditional way to connect two business locations to send files back and forth is with a point to point data connection. T1 lines have been perfect for this at modest bandwidth levels. DS3 and OCx SONET services work the same way when higher speeds are needed. Ethernet line service is the latest entry into the Point to Point bandwidth space. But have you considered MPLS networks as your best value for the money?

MPLS may seem like an odd choice, since MPLS networks are really targeted for multi-point connectivity in place of older technologies like Frame Relay. MPLS networks are organized as clouds with multiple access points over the service footprint. If you have a dozen or a hundred locations to network, an MPLS solution is likely the best solution by a mile. Yet, there’s no reason you can’t just specify connecting point A to point B as your only connection.

The one possible downside might be cost. Whether a dedicated point to point line service or an MPLS network service makes sense for any given application depends a lot on the distance between locations and whether you intend to order more than one line. Why multiple lines? While some businesses have only two locations to connect, many others have three or more. The most expensive way to make multiple connections is by running point to point lines from each location to the others. A more cost effective approach is to set up a star network with the routing equipment at headquarters and point to point lines fanning out from there to each satellite location. The least cost most flexible solution is often to simply connect every location to a regional or national MPLS network and specify the connectivity within the cloud.

T1 point to point lines became popular because they are relatively inexpensive and offer the security and performance of a dedicated line. You have exclusive use of the 1.5 Mbps bandwidth in both directions. Since the line is “nailed up” to interconnect two locations, security is high. It’s difficult to impossible for snoops and troublemakers to gain access to your private line.

One disadvantage of using dedicated T1 lines is that you are limited to 1.5 Mbps per line, although you can often bond T1 lines together to multiply the bandwidth up to a maximum of 10 or 12 Mbps. Another drawback is that there is no economy of scale. Two lines cost twice as much as one line. They also tend to be priced by distance. A point to point line in town costs much less than a connection from coast to coast. If you need to cross an ocean or international border the cost goes up significantly.

Everything that has been said about T1 lines also goes for higher bandwidth options, such as DS3, OC3, and so on. The cost increases along with bandwidth. Ethernet over Copper or Ethernet over Fiber offers higher bandwidth at lower prices, but is also a dedicated line service. It’s the protocol that’s different between T1 or SONET and Ethernet services.

MPLS networks have a different cost model. The network is based on a privately owned high speed national or international fiber optic network. None of the core network is dedicated to a single customer. It is intended to be shared among many customers to amortize the cost. As such, the cost of a point to point or multipoint connection is more attractive than for a dedicated line service. In-town or close by, the dedicated line may be the cheaper solution. But for locations spaced thousands of miles apart or overseas, MPLS networks have the advantage.

What makes MPLS networks a good substitute for dedicated point to point lines is that the network offers security and guaranteed performance as well as a cost savings. The proprietary nature of the label switching protocol and the fact that access is limited to customers of the network make security much higher than on a public network like the Internet. The network operators establish the virtual paths through the network on a case by case basis. You may be sharing the fiber strands, but you can’t access another customer’s data and they can’t see yours.

Do you have a requirement to link business locations? Be sure to get MPLS network service pricing as well as dedicated line pricing for even a two location hookup to make sure you have the best deal.

Broadband Ethernet Internet Services

Ethernet point to point line service and LAN service have become popular with businesses, especially as replacements for T1 lines and now-obsolete Frame Relay networks. But did you also know that Ethernet makes an excellent access connection to MPLS VPN networks and the Internet?

Carrier Ethernet got its start for business as a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) service called Metro Ethernet. Many companies have a need to interconnect multiple facilities located in the same general geographical area. The E-Line point to point services EPL and EVPL give you the same or better connectivity that you’ll get with T1 lines and even multiple T1 lines. E-LAN service links multiple LANs in a mesh network to interconnect your entire organization.

In many cases, what you want is a broadband connection to the Internet rather than a direct link to another private facility. These are traditionally provided using T1 lines and higher bandwidth services, such as DS3, OC3, OC12 and OC48. Now, EFM or Ethernet in the First Mile can provide that same connectivity and likely save you money in the process. Let’s see why.

The reason that T1 lines are so popular is that they are provisioned on ordinary twisted pair telco wiring. That wiring is already in place in most businesses, being used for multi-line telephone service. T1 has been around for more than 50 years and is well established and available most everywhere. The one fly in the ointment is that T1 is bandwidth limited to 1.5 Mbps. Until Ethernet over Copper became available, the workaround to this bandwidth limitation was to bond multiple T1 lines together to make one large data pipe. This proven practice works well, but gets expensive since you have to pay the full price of each T1 line no matter how many you order.

The competition to T1 now is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. As the name implies, this service also uses ordinary twisted pair copper telco wiring that is currently in place. Like bonded T1, EoC uses multiple copper pair to increase bandwidth. What’s different, though, is the cost structure. A popular Ethernet over Copper service is 3x3 Mbps EoC. That’s 3 Mbps upload and 3 Mbps download, a symmetrical bandwidth, delivered over copper wiring. The cost of 3 Mbps Ethernet is pretty much equal to the cost for a 1.5 Mbps T1 line in areas where both are available.

That’s a nice cost savings for any company, but it doesn’t stop there. Ethernet over Copper can be installed at speeds from 1 to 20 Mbps. Bonding T1 lines gets you maybe half that maximum bandwidth and gets real expensive as you add more lines. Ethernet is designed to be far more scalable. You have the provider install an Ethernet port for the highest speed you expect to need. Then order the bandwidth you require today. In the future, you can simply call your service provider and tell them to crank it up to the next level. They can give you a bandwidth increase in as little as an hour because the bandwidth capacity is already installed. No additional construction effort is needed.

What happens if you need more than 20 Mbps Internet service? At that point you need to move up to fiber optic service. The good news is that Ethernet over Fiber is more available than ever before and competitive service providers are willing to make deals on the installation cost, especially if your needs are substantial. Once you have fiber to the premises, you’ll be able to go form 50 or 100 Mbps on up to GigE Gigabit Ethernet and even 10 Gbps Ethernet broadband service if you need it.

Does your business location suffer from inadequate dedicated Internet service or are you just curious if you can save money over your present solution? If so, get prices and availability of Broadband Ethernet Internet Service over copper or fiber as appropriate. Sorry, this service is not available for home offices or other residential use.

Meshed MPLS Forms a Cloud of Clouds

MPLS networks have risen to prominence lately as replacements for old-school Frame Relay networks that link multiple business locations. MPLS networks are highly popular because of their ability to transport nearly any protocol with high quality and reliability. One remaining wish has been the ability to use a multitude of carriers at various locations and still have them interconnected by a managed MPLS network. That desire has now been realized.

AireSpring, one of the fastest growing and most innovative competitive carriers, is now offering what they call a Meshed MPLS Network. Just what does such a networking scheme do and how is it different from the meshed network connections inherent in any MPLS network?

MPLS networks can be thought of as classic clouds. You connect each of your locations to the cloud by means of a last-mile access network and then instruct the MPLS network operator how each location should connect to the others. These can be private point to point links, a star network with corporate headquarters at the center, or a meshed network arrangement. The meshed approach is highly popular because it allows any location to communicate with any other location at will. You don’t have to be actively managing or even monitoring the network, as the service provider takes care of that.

The one fly in the ointment is that you need to contract with one MPLS network provider for all your connections. That service provider will take care of getting the access connections, even if it means subleasing copper or fiber from another carrier. But what if you already have contracts with carriers to provide MPLS mesh networks for particular geographical territories?

This can happen easily if your company grew by mergers and acquisitions. It can also happen in decentralized organizations or conglomerates of businesses that haven’t traditionally had a need to connect with each other. Not all carriers have a nationwide footprint. It’s common for some carriers to be strong in parts of the country and not have a presence at all in others. All of this results in the head-scratching problem of how you tie together disparate WAN networks.

This is the problem that AireSpring’s Meshed MPLS Network solution addresses. Their MPLS Mesh (tm) creates a NNI (Network to Network Interface) that ties together multiple carrier solutions running at T-1 or higher speeds into one MPLS Virtual Private Network. You then have the choice of linking all of your sites into a single IP network or segmenting your data into multipole secure networks. Note that the segmenting can now be logical and not geographical.

Meshed MPLS technology gives companies a flexibility that they haven’t had before. You can now pick and choose which carrier you want to serve which locations to minimize your telecom costs. Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms ensure that you can converge your entire network for voice, data and video. Your critical business applications will get the prioritization that they need for high quality performance.

Are you frustrated with your current hodge-podge of disparate telecom services that don’t quite perform the way you need and cost you a small fortune? It’s time to take a look a consolidating all that with a more advanced networking solution. Get MPLS network service pricing and features for all your business locations now. You’ll likely find you can have higher performance and lower cost at the same time.

Metro Ethernet MPLS Combo

Two of the hottest networking technologies now are Metro Ethernet and MPLS networks. We normally think of using one or the other. But what advantages are gained when you combine the two?

Metro Ethernet is the familiar Ethernet protocol that we’ve come to know and love on our LAN networks. It’s not exactly the same, because it needs to be adapted to work over longer distances than typical building and campus runs.

This, and other service enhancements, have been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), an industry group comprised of over 170 companies and more than 75 service providers. The MEF has defined five attributes that distinguish what they call Carrier Ethernet from the familiar LAN based Ethernet. These are standardized services, scalability, reliability, service management and quality of service.

What carriers get is a set of certified network elements that work to connect users on a local or worldwide basis. They also have services that can be transported over whatever physical networks they have available, including legacy TDM networks originally designed for telephony.

Metro Ethernet is Carrier Ethernet implemented within a city or metropolitan area. Two of the popular standardized services are Ethernet Line Service, a point to point connection, and Ethernet LAN Service, a multipoint connection. Companies use Metro Ethernet to link branch office buildings, factories, warehouses, data centers and other locations in the area.

Ethernet can also be used as a last mile access connection to larger private networks or the public Internet. These links have traditionally been T1 lines, DS3 connections, or SONET/SDH fiber optic services. Ethernet is growing in popularity as a network access service because it is lower in cost and more scalable than legacy telecom services.

At the same time that Carrier Ethernet has soared in popularity, MPLS networks have seen a similar growth in demand. Most networks have a defined protocol that they run. This can be TDM, IP, Frame Relay, or something else. The beauty of MPLS networks is that they are designed to support all protocols. Hence, the name Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The label switching part has to do with a tagging system that is used to encapsulate and route packets while they are on the network. Since the MPLS network doesn’t need to use the internal packet structure for routing, it doesn’t matter what those labels are attached to.

Most new large scale networks are based on MPLS. It doesn’t matter what’s running as the core network. It might be IP. It might be SONET. What the user sees is a privately run network that can securely transport voice, data, video or converged network traffic within a city, between cities or around the world. MPLS networks have all but completely replaced the older Frame Relay networks that were once used to link computers over wide areas.

What you probably have guessed is that Ethernet and MPLS are very compatible. Many carriers have nationwide or international MPLS network service footprints. You can combine Ethernet access with a large MPLS network and create a very cost effective way to link your geographically diverse business locations.

Large scale Carrier Ethernet networks are also on the ascendency. A new interconnection standard called ENNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface connects Carrier Ethernet service providers so they can share traffic and effectively increase their service footprints. The underlying transport networks may or may not be MPLS networks themselves.

What’s combination of Ethernet and MPLS offers the highest performance at the lowest cost for your applications? There are network consultants available right now to provide you with Metro Ethernet and MPLS service options and pricing at no charge for serious business and organizational users.

MPLS Network Services

Wide area networks are almost a utility service for businesses today. You can’t get much done without broadband connectivity and the ability to securely transfer information between business locations. Do you really want to go back to FAX messages and overnight mail to conduct business? On the other hand, can you afford to do everything you need to do electronically? You can with the right WAN connections.

The idea behind MPLS networks is the ability to send anything, anywhere, anytime without in any way affecting the voice, video or data involved. Many networks can’t do this very well. Take the Internet, for example. It definitely lets you connect to anybody, anywhere on Earth. How robust that connection is and how transparent it is to the packets that traverse it is another matter.

The whole reason for using TCP/IP to transmit data is to ensure that what you send gets delivered intact at the other end. It won’t necessarily happen on the first attempt. If is doesn’t work, TCP gives it another try. Eventually, everything you need to recreate a file on the far end that exactly matches the one that was sent arrives and can be re-assembled in order.

Time sensitive transmissions, such as interactive voice and video, may not fare so well. Just about any little upset causes them to glitch noticeably. Video may pixelate. Audio starts to distort and break up. As delays in transmission time mount, it may be hard to maintain an interactive conversation. You just don’t know when the other person will start speaking.

Little wonder that companies tend to stick with legacy technologies, like analog voice, that they know work, or create their own proprietary and very pricy internal networks. At least when you build it yourself, you have some control of the results.

The high cost and labor intensive nature of private networks combined with the flakiness of the public Internet is what makes MPLS networks shine. An MPLS network is a carefully engineered and managed wide area network for hire. MPLS networks have a regional, national or international footprint. You connect each of your locations to the network through an access connection, which may be anything from a T1 line or ISDN PRI, to a DS3, SONET/SDH, or an Ethernet over copper or fiber service.

MPLS networks are often referred to as “cloud” networks. You connect to and from the cloud, but don’t have to worry about managing the internals of the network. What’s happening inside the MPLS cloud is that special tags are added to your packets as they enter the network and removed when they leave. While on the network, those tags are used to route your packets from source to destination. The actual content of your packets is not disturbed in the process.

The MPLS network itself has to be transparent to all the traffic flowing through it. That means having adequate bandwidth available to support all users. MPLS supports all types of traffic, including IP data transfers, VoIP telephony, ISDN PRI telephony, video conferencing, video streaming and so on. You can specify the quality of service characteristic for each of your packets and the network will ensure that you have the bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss characteristics to support that quality. The MP in MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol, and that’s exactly what it is.

MPLS networks have largely replaced Frame Relay networks, a lower speed & less sophisticated approach to the same service. They are also replacing proprietary corporate networks constructed from multiple point to point line services. When it comes to connections that span the country and even reach out to international destinations, MPLS networks offer significant cost savings while maintaing high quality of service.

Do MPLS Networks make sense for your operation? Find out by checking the cost and availability of MPLS Network Services. Then compare price, effort and quality with what you are doing now to make the best decision.

What Leased Line Service Providers Offer

Most businesses get their telecommunication services from leased line service providers. That includes telephone, Internet, and point to point line services. You probably have some of these contracts yourself. But do you know about the cost reductions and all of the new services that have become available recently?

The nature of telecommunications services has changed dramatically in recent years. The two biggest changes are cost savings that come from a flurry of new competitive service providers and the introduction of new technologies that offer additional services.

You can still get most of the telecom services that were available a decade or so ago. The most popular line service is T-carrier, especially the T1 line. T1 is a telephone company technology and comes in several flavors. The original use was a digital trunk to carry multiple phone calls between telco switching centers or into a multi-line business phone system. An upgraded version of the T1 telephone line is called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. It gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus a data channel for dialing, switching and Caller ID. Nearly every PBX phone system and many key telephone systems can be easily configured to use T1 PRI.

Another use for T1 lines is to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. A point to point T1 line offers 1.5 Mbps in both directions simultaneously. If you need more bandwidth than this, you can get bonded T1 service that combines multiple T1 lines up to about 10 or 12 Mbps total.

A related service is the T1 access line. This is a last mile connection to a larger network. At one time, the larger network was called Frame Relay. Nowadays, MPLS networks have taken over this role of connecting business locations on a regional, national or international basis. MPLS networks have the advantages of nearly unlimited bandwidth that can transport just about any voice, data or video protocol.

T1 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is the choice for broadband Internet access for many smaller businesses. The cost is only a fraction of what it was a decade ago. As a professional grade telecom service, you enjoy a reliability and constant bandwidth not typical of consumer oriented services like DSL and Cable.

The new competition to T1 lines is coming from Carrier Ethernet services, including Metro Ethernet. Like T1, Ethernet is a wireline service. Also like T1, it is delivered on multiple twisted pair copper wiring for lower bandwidth services. That copper wiring is generally already installed for multi-line telephone service. Ethernet offers the same point to point and Internet connections you may be using with T1 lines now. But Ethernet can also give you layer 2 switched network service between several or more locations around town or over a wider area, including overseas offices.

Ethernet is gradually taking over from T1 in metropolitan areas where it is most available. A popular service is 3 Mbps Ethernet for about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. For more demanding uses, 10 Mbps Ethernet is becoming a popular standard.

Once you get into the higher bandwidths, 45 Mbps and above, fiber optic cabling takes the place of twisted pair copper. DS3 is the T-carrier upgrade to T1. It is now delivered over SONET fiber optic services at 45 Mbps. The Ethernet equivalent is 50 Mbps Ethernet service, although Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps is an industry standard and the speed of many local networks. Like copper-based Ethernet services Ethernet over Fiber tends to offer much lower costs per Mbps than equivalent traditional SONET telecom services.

You should also know that both T1 and Ethernet services have an option to get both telephone and Internet over the same line. Integrated T1 is the legacy wireline service. SIP trunking is the IP service that gives you VoIP telephony and broadband Internet access.

Have you been wondering if you are paying too much for the wireline services you’ve just kept renewing over the years? Find out by getting up to date quotes for both Ethernet and T1 or SONET wireline services from dozens of competitive service providers. The range of services and their current costs may astound you.



Note: Photo of multipair cable courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Switch to Switched Ethernet Service

Are you still living in the world of telecom past? Those are the days when you had one network protocol inside and something completely different outside. Switch to switched Ethernet service and your network has more options and easier interfacing.

What constitutes telecom past? It’s the legacy transport services developed as telephone technologies and later pressed into service to connect data networks through the public switched telephone network. That includes such favorites as Frame Relay, T1, DS3 and SONET/SDH.

What’s so bad about these venerable telecom services? Nothing at all. They are time-tested solutions to business connectivity. All of these services are readily available, perhaps with the exception of Frame Relay which is being rapidly replaced by MPLS networks. They offer high reliability and dedicated bandwidth suitable for business operations. The only real question is whether these are the BEST options available for your connectivity needs.

There’s a newer networking technology being deployed nationwide, indeed worldwide, right now. What it does is simplify the LAN to MAN to WAN connection. Everything is standardized on the Ethernet protocol. Connectivity is seamless, since outside network connections simply plug into your network edge Ethernet switch and become an extension of your LAN.

Contrast this approach to having to install a CSU/DSU interface card into a router to make the networks compatible. Inside your company, everything is packet based. Outside, those packets have to be shuttled into and out of TDM channels that transport them between locations or to and from the Internet.

With an all-Ethernet system, you also gain some service options you didn’t have before. Ethernet line service gives you a point to point connection between two LANs at different locations. Ethernet LAN service creates a multi-point to multipoint network that links 3 or more locations. All of these locations will appear to be on one large bridged network with switched Ethernet service. The engineer at the desk across town is effectively right next door to the marketing manager a couple of states away and the warehouse on the other side of the globe.

Just to add icing to the cake, Ethernet services also tend to be lower in cost per Mbps than equivalent legacy telecom services. It’s not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet at the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1 service. The distinction gets even larger as you go up in speed and include multiple locations.

Are you missing out by still depending on yesterday’s telecom technology to support today’s business needs? Check pricing and availability of switched Ethernet service to see if you can get better service for less money? There’s a good chance you can.

Cloud Networking Services Extend Business Footprint

If you have a single office in a single city, you may have need for cloud computing or hosted PBX, aka telephony in the cloud. But chances are your communications needs are more about connecting to a service provider’s cloud than requiring a cloud of your own. It’s quite different for companies with multiple business locations. Cloud networking services are just what you need to interconnect two or more locations so they can act as one.

What is cloud networking? It is the use of public or private networks that connect geographically diverse sites on a one to one, one to many or many to many basis. The Internet is a cloud. So are privately run MPLS networks and their Frame Relay predecessors. You can even create your own cloud, if you like. You do this by leasing dedicated lines between locations and setting up your own routing scheme to determine how locations may communicate.

In fact, the ad-hoc private network is how many growing businesses get started with multi-location connections. They start off with a T1 point to point data line that connects their main office to a branch site. As more offices or retail locations are added, more lines are connected. At some point, you are dealing with a spider’s web of private lines that need constant management and are costing a small fortune.

This is where cloud networks shine. The idea behind the cloud is that costs are amortized by users sharing the resources of the cloud. Each user is required to provide a connection from each of their desired locations to the cloud network. The connections between locations and the transport of voice, data or video through the shared portion of the network is the responsibility of the cloud. The name “cloud” comes from the convention of drawing this shared network in the shape of a cumulus cloud. It signifies that you don’t manage what goes on in there. That’s someone else’s job.

Actually, you do need to be concerned about what’s going on in that cloud even though you don’t directly operate or control it. You don’t want your valuable information damaged or intercepted during the transport process. Take the biggest cloud in the world, the Internet. It has the advantages of being near universally available and relatively cheap to use. But the Internet also has the disadvantages of being a “best effort” service with no guaranteed performance parameters and enough security concerns to give you pause. How can anyone use the Internet for serious business applications?

In some cases you can’t. Two-way real-time applications have a tough time with the unpredictable performance that is inherent in the design of the Internet cloud. But it still works just fine for Web access, email, small scale data backup to remote servers, and one-way video that is properly buffered. In fact, your business probably needs access to the Internet just to communicate with customers, place orders or do research. If you are going to send sensitive business data between locations using the Internet cloud, however, you’ll need to protect yourself by encrypting those packets so they can’t be read by unintended parties. That process is called tunneling. The overall connection is called IP VPN. VPN, meaning Virtual Private Network.

If the internet is too flakey or scary to support your business, the cloud you’ll be most interested in is called MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This is a privately run network with a regional or nationwide footprint. The combination of private ownership and proprietary technology means that performance can be guaranteed and security is inherently better than the public Internet. That’s why MPLS networks are also called MPLS VPN networks, even without packet encryption. Of course you can still encrypt your data to add even more security... something of a belt and suspenders approach.

A specialized type of cloud networking is telephone service. Instead of hooking all your phones with individual lines to the local phone company or managing an in-house PBX system, you connect your phones to the cloud using SIP trunks. This is also called hosted PBX. Users that all connect to the same cloud may communicate over this private network. When you need to make or receive calls with the general public, those calls are connected to the public telephone network by the service provider.

Can your company benefit from cloud networking or better cloud services? It’s fast and easy to find out. Just take a second and put in an inquiry for availability and pricing of competitive cloud networking services.

MPLS Bandwidth A Bargain

MPLS networks are becoming more and more of a standard telecom service offering. If you have multiple locations to link, you need to know about MPLS. Why? Because you could be saving a bundle over your current connectivity solution.

You’ve heard of cloud networks? MPLS is a cloud networking technology. This is different that cloud computing or cloud storage because MPLS is only about making connections. Whether you do anything within the cloud is another matter. This is about transport, or getting packets from point to point.

MPLS networks are privately owned and operated. If you want to get on the MPLS network, you’ll need to make arrangements with a MPLS service provider. It’s not like the Internet, which is open to anyone and everyone. The advantage of this premium-grade bandwidth service is that the MPLS network operator can guarantee bandwidth and quality of service.

But doesn’t premium-grade mean premium price? Not really. You need to compare apples to apples. In this case, you need to compare what you pay to use the MPLS network with what it costs to maintain the same quality connections another way. Traditionally, that other way has been proprietary company networks constructed from dedicated point to point lines or Frame Relay Networks.

Frame Relay is actually the ancestor to MPLS. It was developed for the same purpose. That was to connect geographically diverse locations with reliable and secure data links. Frame Relay networks served us well for decades. But they were designed in an era of much lower bandwidths, prior to the onslaught of audio, video and massive file sizes.

MPLS is the upgrade to Frame Relay. It can handle anything you need to transport in any format. The letters M-P-L-S stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. Multi-Protocol means that this network can handle voice, data, video and even TDM services such as switched circuit telephony. The built-in quality of service mechanisms ensure that each service gets the network characteristics it needs. You don’t have to worry about large data transfers causing your phone calls to drop.

The bargain pricing offered by MPLS networks is that the cloud is efficiently utilized to handle traffic from multiple clients. That way, you are only paying for what you need. You can always add more locations or bandwidth if the need arises. Try doing that with proprietary networks.

Does MPLS offer a cost savings for your operations? Find out with a MPLS network competitive price quote. It’s fast, easy and free.

MPLS VPN Advantages

MPLS VPN networks are more and more in demand by companies needing to link multiple geographically diverse business locations. These may be across town, across the country or around the world... or any combination. Let’s take a look at why MPLS networks are becoming so popular.

Branch offices, retail franchise operations, warehouses, factories and medical centers are no longer isolated entities. Once, the public telephone system was enough to tie related locations together. That phone system was also pressed into service to transmit information rapidly using FAX and then dial-up Internet access. Broadband Internet using a dedicated high bandwidth wireline service followed for direct digital transmission. Other dedicated lines were used as secure point to point connections for sharing sensitive business documents.

Some companies desired more complex networking arrangements, linking every location to every other location in a fully meshed wide area network. One way to do that is to roll your own star network with point to point dedicated lines to the main office. Frame Relay networks came about as a way to outsource all that networking and the high cost of so many dedicated lines. But Frame Relay was never planned to run at the bandwidths we need today.

What MPLS VPN networks do is provide a private networking solution that outsources the problem of connecting many diverse locations. The cost of operating the network is shared among the user base, which makes it very cost effective for each user compared to running their own completely private network.

Unlike the Internet, a MPLS VPN has security built-in and performance characteristics of the network are carefully controlled. This is especially important for companies that want to converge their voice, data and video networks into a single network that can carry all traffic. There are big cost advantages in network convergence. But it’s all for naught unless you can guarantee quality of service for all your traffic. MPLS networks have Class of Service mechanisms to ensure that bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss are carefully controlled.

MPLS VPN security is based on using a proprietary tag or label switching protocol in place of standard IP routing. As soon as IP packets are received by the provider edge router, they are inspected and a MPLS label is attached. It’s that label that is used to route the packets while they are on the network. It’s removed as they exit the network. It’s like the MPLS network is speaking a foreign language within its service footprint.

MPLS networks are also easily scalable. If you build your own network from T1 lines or DS3 services, it can be a nightmare to upgrade bandwidth across the network. With an MPLS solution, you simply request additional resources from the service provider. You can also add or delete service locations much easier than you may be able to with long haul point to point line services. You only need an access connection to the MPLS “cloud” which is at the service provider’s nearest point of presence.

Can an MPLS VPN network be advantageous to your business? Get recommendations and competitive price quotes for MPLS VPN services now.

MPLS Networks In Demand And Competitive

What’s the hottest telecommunications service that you may be missing out on? It’s MPLS networks. They’ve become highly in-demand and the source of competition among competitive carriers. Here’s what you need to know and how you can check to see if an MPLS network can save your company money.



What’s driving the proliferation of MPLS networks is that enterprise applications are becoming more sophisticated and more dependent on connectivity among multiple locations. There are big cost savings to be hand through network convergence, enterprise VoIP and mission critical processes running on high throughput server farms. But for these benefits to be realized, you need WAN connections that are a solid as your company LAN.

The Internet isn’t up to it. True, the worldwide connectivity of the public Internet is unmatched. But network performance leaves a lot to be desired. Security is certainly an issue. Look at the efforts you need to put up to prevent your systems being infected by malicious bots and viruses. Beyond that, there is no promise of predictable performance. Bandwidth, path congestion, latency, jitter, corrupted and dropped packets are all up for grabs. That’s the reason TCP/IP was chosen as a data transfer protocol in the first place. If a packet doesn’t succeed at traversing the Internet at first, simply try, try again.

Such inconsistency can be tolerated for Web pages, email and many data transfers. Even the security issue can be managed with encryption. But time sensitive applications like real-time voice and video need better treatment. Who wants to get off the public switched telephone network and risk garbled and dropped phone calls? Could any call center survive with those problems?

The need for controlled and predictable network performance is what promoted the growth of private network solutions, such as Frame Relay. But Frame Relay is a technology who’s time has come and gone. It’s too expensive and, for the most part, too low in bandwidth for today’s needs. What’s replacing Frame Relay is MPLS.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks are privately run networks that only serve their customer’s needs. Those needs typically demand secure point to point and multipoint connections with Class of Service (CoS) to make sure voice, video and data all have the network resources they need. Latency, jitter and packet loss are minimized. Bandwidth is sufficient to support all network requirements. If more customers come onboard, more resources are deployed to ensure quality performance for everyone.

MPLS services can be configured as point to point or fully meshed any-to-any connectivity. You specify how you want to connect and your service provider sets it up. New locations are easy to add or change. That makes MPLS networking an excellent option for businesses with many branch offices or retail locations. Two-way VSAT satellite has been the private networking solution for many retail stores, restaurants, gas stations and so on. But satellite bandwidth is limited, sometimes lost during heavy weather, and the cost isn’t necessarily cheap. It’s time to take a look at MPLS to see if this option makes more sense going forward.

MPLS Networks Today is a new service that makes it easy to get consultation and pricing for your multi-location network needs. With a quick inquiry, you’ll be connected to a team of expert consultants who have access to many MPLS service providers and access networks. Competition among IP network carriers with national and international service footprints has become intense. That means you’ll get highly competitive quotes that may be much lower than what you think this type of service will cost. Even if you aren’t currently in the market to upgrade your existing network, it could be well worth your while to check MPLS network pricing and availability. There’s a good chance you could be saving money with an MPLS solution.

Two Routes to Virtual Private Networking

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs have become the preferred solution for connecting multiple business locations. What’s caused this migration from private ad-hoc point to point connections is cost and ease of maintenance. By partnering with a managed service provider, you can have the benefits of secure multipoint communication without having to staff up or pay exorbitant monthly line lease fees.

Virtual private networking is in the clouds. The question is which type of cloud to choose? You can implement your VPN solution using the public Internet. You can also choose to go totally private for higher performance.

The Internet based VPN is where the term virtually private got started. Everybody knows that there is little private about the Internet. It connects everyone, everywhere with nothing in the way of assured performance or data security. What the Internet has going for it is economy of scale. The monstrous size and diverse connection methods mean that broadband connections are fairly cheap at the consumer level and reasonably priced for dedicated business access with a service level agreement.

What about those security issues? It seems like any data you put on the network is subject to interception by those who could do you harm. It’s not even safe to connect a PC to the Internet without installing virus blocking software first. Some tests have shown that it takes only a matter of minutes to browse the Web with an unprotected computer to have it become infected by compromised sites or malicious messages.

Yet, we use the Internet every day for such sensitive applications as banking and shopping. The key to keeping your data secure is encryption. Establishing encrypted links through the Internet is called “tunneling.” You create a private tunnel through a public thoroughfare. Your network connection isn’t private, but it is virtually private.

Another form of virtual private networking is provided by privately run network clouds, such as Frame Relay or MPLS. These networks strictly limit access to paying customers. They are also managed to establish only those connections that you specify. Because you are sharing the network cloud with other users, your connections are described as virtually private rather than private line. They offer a high level of security, but may also be encrypted to provide an even higher level of guaranteed privacy.

Private networks offer assured performance, especially in the critical areas of latency and jitter that are important for VoIP telephone and real-time video. The Internet is offered with “best effort” performance, but generally lower costs. How do you choose the right solution for your application? Perhaps the best answer is the obvious one. Get price and performance quotes on competing solutions and recommendations from experts before choosing. That’s all made easy with a quick Virtual Private Networking inquiry at AffordableVPN.com. You’ll get a fast reply and the support you need to make the right VPN decision.

My MPLS Network Can Beat Up Your Frame Relay Network

When it comes to interconnecting multiple business sites, you have a choice in technologies. Popular options include point to point dedicated T1 lines with corporate headquarters in the center of a star network, VPN over dedicated Internet connections, Frame Relay networks or the newer MPLS networks. Now, how to choose?

The Internet VPN approach is popular because of its relatively low cost, especially when you need to connect to many traveling or working from home employees. You implement it with a software application that encodes your data while it traverses the Internet. Performance is hit and miss, as is the Internet. Even with encoded packets, the lack of security on the Internet makes IT managers a bit squeamish when it comes to sending the most sensitive company data through these connections.

Point to point T1 or DS3 connections are inherently more secure, as you lease the entire capacity of the channel for your exclusive use. These are nailed up connections that simply idle when you are not sending data. You can also encode your data with a VPN solution for the ultimate in security. But there’s a price to be paid, and that is one of higher cost.

Cost is what Frame Relay networks were designed to address. A Frame Relay network is a privately run network that only serves its clients. There’s no access for the general public. You access the network through a FRAD or Frame Relay Access Device. This specialized hardware sends your data through PVCs or permanent virtual circuits. These are assigned paths through the network cloud that only connect endpoints you specify. In addition to limited access, the assignment of PVCs creates a level of security well beyond what you have in a piblic network. You can also encrypt your data to make it extra secure.

Frame Relay networks were designed to interconnect computing centers before the age of the Internet. The frame takes the place of the Ethernet packet. Network speed is typically in the range of 56 Kbps to T1 speeds of 1.5 Mbps.

An upgrade to the Frame Relay concept is MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. Like Frame Relay, an MPLS network is privately run and serves only subscribing customers. Also like Frame Relay, access is through a specialized piece of equipment known as a Tag Router. Your packets, which can be data, voice, or video, have “tag” attached to them as they enter the network. All routing is done using the tags. Just about any protocol may be transported on this tagging system. Class of service can be specified through the tags to ensure that real time protocols avoid any delays. You may also choose to encrypt your packets for extra security.

MPLS networks can run at any network speed and are being adopted by major carriers as the multipoint to multipoint technology of choice. For this reason, MPLS is fast replacing Frame Relay. For new applications in connecting multiple sites nationwide or even worldwide, MPLS is generally your best choice. With competition in the carrier market for this business, prices may be more attractive than you would expect. How good are they? Find out with an MPLS Network price and availability check now.

MPLS Networks As The Universal WAN

Most companies have a Wide Area Network or WAN connection of some type. It might be a point to point T1 data line or a suite of them. It might be ISDN PRI or SIP Trunking for digital telephone service. It might be a DS3 connection for dedicated Internet access. But what if there was a WAN network that could provide all of these services and more? There is. It’s called MPLS.

MPLS is short for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. It’s a standards-based technology that is something of a “jack of all trades” or “Swiss Army knife” in the telecommunications industry. The multi-protocol designation says it all. This is a network technology that supports many different protocols. No longer do you need completely separate services to support telephone, VPN, point to point connections, video conferencing, and so on.

An MPLS network is a private network that is operated to guarantee bandwidth and performance. That differentiates it from the Internet, which is more of a public resource with no guarantees - just “best effort” service. MPLS service providers can QoS or quality of service to meet your business needs. That ensures that VoIP telephone and video streaming will get the bandwidth, latency and jitter characteristics they need for optimum performance.

The predecessor to MPLS was Frame Relay, also a private networking arrangement designed primarily for lower bandwidth services and requiring considerable engineering work to set-up for each customer. Frame Relay networks are now being largely replaced by MPLS networks.

One thing that Frame Relay networks offer is the ability to interconnect multiple business locations securely. MPLS networks offer that same capability. As a private network, access is limited and strictly controlled. That makes VPNs or Virtual Private Networks readily available over MPLS. Security is also inherently high because all packets are routed using network specific labels and not IP or other addresses. You can, of course, add encryption to your data to make it even more secure and it traverses the MPLS network and last mile access connections.

The MPLS network can be thought of as a cloud that is accessible from many locations. Your service can be set up for a single point to point connection, a hub and spoke replacement for central offices serving many remote locations, or a fully meshed network where any site can communicate with any other site. You specify the types of connections you want and the network provider sets up the label switching routers to provide this specific service. If you need to add locations or change the way you want to connect, there are no wiring changes that need to be made. The network provider will simply reprogram your service to meet your new specifications.

Do you have a need for secure and reliable communications among two or more geographically diverse business locations? If so, an MPLS network solution may offer you the least cost for the performance you require. The best way to find out is to shop for MPLS network options now.

MPLS Network Magic in the Cloud

The popular convention is to represent large networks as clouds. Data goes in at some point of the cloud and comes out another. But what goes on in-between? With MPLS networks, that magic is what ensures the integrity of your packets and gets them where they need to be, on time and at much lower costs than other transport solutions.

Let's take a peek inside one of those clouds and see how the magic works. The first thing you'll note is that MPLS networks are private networks. The big public network, the Internet, has a completely different structure. The Internet is designed to get massive numbers of packets from hundreds of millions of users from source to destination on a best effort basis. "Best effort" means no guarantees. You launch your packets and hope for the best. Most of the time they get where they are going in a reasonable amount of time. If not, that what the TCP part of TCP/IP is for. Send a packet enough times and it will reach its destination if at all possible.

So what's wrong with that? After all, the Internet is about the cheapest transport medium you can find for digital data. For non-critical applications it works just fine. Especially if you use a dedicated connection, such as a T1 line or Ethernet connection. Security on the Internet isn't so hot, but can be improved with encryption to create a VPN or Virtual Private Network.

MPLS networks are designed to address these limitations of Internet transport. Instead of being virtually private, they are private by design. An MPLS carrier manages the network and only for its paying customers. The public gets no entree. That improves security from the get-go. As a managed network, the carrier can ensure the performance of its network with enough bandwidth available to accommodate all customers all the time.

The technology of MPLS does the rest. The LS of MPLS stands for label switching. A packet enters the network though a label router or tag switch which adds a label field to the packet. That label defines source, destination and quality of service. Throughout the network, other label routers get the packet efficiently to its destination and make sure that it gets the priority specified. That's a huge advantage for real-time services such as VoIP telephone or live video. The Internet doesn't differentiate between packets, so if there is congestion or re-routing, you get jitter, latency and perhaps dropped packets.

Note that MPLS networks don't care about the IP data fields on the packets. They rely strictly on their own labels. That's where the MP comes in. MP stands for multi-protocol. An MPLS network doesn't care what protocol generated the packet. It could be IP, TDM or something else. They all get labels established on entry and removed on exit. So an MPLS networks can transport just about anything digital you can generate.

That's the magic, but who uses MPLS networks? The answer is anyone who needs to connect multiple locations and needs a combination of high quality and low cost. MPLS network solutions are considerably lower in cost compared to private point to point data lines and are an excellent replacement for older Frame Relay networks. Access to the network cloud is typically by a T1 line or Ethernet connection at each location. The network may span a metropolitan area or be nationwide.

If you have two or more business locations that need to be connected with a secure high performance network, see how affordable MPLS networking can be. The more locations you have, the more you'll save.

MPLS Just Got Easier

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is fast becoming the core transport technology of choice for point to point and point to multipoint networks. If MPLS is gaining acceptance, what is on the wane? It's Frame Relay networks for sure, and perhaps legacy TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) networking in general. If you're still on one of those legacy networking technologies but wondering if a move to MPLS would be advantageous, you're in luck. A new service is here to make your life easy.

The newest service of Telarus, Inc., the creator of the GeoQuote (tm) instant online pricing service for T1 and DS3 line services, is called Shop For MPLS. It's exactly what it sounds like and then some. This is an online tool that lets you enter information about your business locations and how you are going to use the network. That gives the automated search system and the Telarus consultants the data needed to calculate the best options for your situation.

You'll notice that the Shop For MPLS query form is more detailed than the simple GeoQuote quote request form found on Shop For T1. The reason for this lies in the inherent nature of MPLS networking.

If MPLS were a wireless technology, it might be called 4G. The impetus for a new core network technology comes from the need to transport a variety of protocols from point to point or as a mesh network. Plus today's need to provide a QoS or quality of service control to ensure that real time services, such as VoIP or live video, are protected from degradation by network congestion.

Without MPLS, you have a potpourri of network technologies and pick the one that most closely matches your application requirements. Frame Relay has been a popular service for connecting multiple locations. It uses a private network with virtual circuits that are set-up between locations. Multiple users share the network and the cost, but your data has a committed information rate that is protected.

MPLS does something similar by employing an extensive private network to connect among multiple locations. Instead of virtual circuits, MPLS routers employ labels or tags that define source, destination, and quality of service. The quality of service part of the tag is what makes MPLS able to reliably transport voice and video and well as data.

MPLS networks are based on IP rather than legacy TDM protocol, although they can transport TDM services such as T-carrier or SONET. Many large scale carriers are building new MPLS networks or converting their TDM networks to MPLS. This make the MPLS marketplace very competitive and offers considerable cost savings for network service users.

The new Shop For MPLS online service recognizes that many ideal candidates for MPLS networking are companies with many locations. These can be branch offices, retail outlets, franchises, warehouses and factories. You have the ability to upload a site list rather than having to individually enter a dozen, a hundred or a thousand locations, or mail-in a list or electronic file. That alone can shave days off the quote process and improve accuracy.

The automated analytical tools available to Telarus consultants further improves the opportunity to find the lowest cost solutions from among a large suite of competitive carriers, making it easy to get a good deal on MPLS services.