Extending Ethernet over MPLS Networks

Ethernet started out as a local area network protocol, but is quickly becoming the metropolitan area network protocol of choice. It offers easy interfacing to existing wired and wireless business networks, rapid bandwidth scaling without equipment changes, and a lower cost structure than traditional telecom services. If Ethernet is so great for the LAN and MAN, how about Ethernet for the WAN?

Ethernet WAN is enjoying a rising popularity, especially among companies with multiple business sites located across the United States and across international borders. You can get dedicated point to point wired Ethernet connections between any two locations, but a competing methodology that is gaining steam is Ethernet over MPLS.

Why use an MPLS network to transport your Ethernet traffic? The first reason is that MPLS networks are already in place and going where you want to send your traffic. Sure, you can custom engineer a dedicated private line service, but why re-invent the wheel? Ethernet is easily transported over MPLS networks using Pseudowire encapsulation that emulates the wireline it competes with. Which do you think is going to be less expensive? Paying for a custom point to point wireline connection or being one stream of traffic on a large MPLS network?

The way it tends to work out is that short haul Ethernet links have the cost advantage when implemented as dedicated lines. This is especially true if you are nowhere near an MPLS carrier node. Once you start looking at coast to coast transport or a situation where you want multiple Ethernet LANs connected in a transparent mesh network, MPLS networks gain the advantage. MPLS also has the edge when you want to cross international borders to include foreign sites on your corporate network.

Carriers may be muddying the water even further by offering Ethernet line services that consist of copper or fiber Ethernet access connections to their MPLS network core, where the long haul Ethernet transport really takes place.

There are several types of Ethernet services that are really popular right now. One is E-Line or Ethernet Private Line service. This is a standardized service specified by the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum). It gives you a Carrier Ethernet connection that bridges two LANs. A variation is EVPL or Ethernet Virtual Private LIne. What EVPL does is let you use a single physical Ethernet port to connect to multiple Ethernet private lines going to out to geographically diverse locations. This is something you could use to replace a star network built on independent wireline connections to those same remote locations.

Another popular service is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service, also called VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service when implemented on an IP/MPLS network. While Ethernet Line Service replaces dedicated point to point telecom lines, Ethernet LAN is a meshed network service that interconnects multiple locations on an any-to-any basis. With VPLS, you bridge your multiple LANs so that they act as one giant LAN network. That’s true even if you have a hundred or thousand sites in the U.S. and and equal number spread out over the globe.

What carrier can offer this level of MPLS networking? Actually, there are several to choose from. If one can’t serve all your sites, multiple carriers can share traffic through a E-NNI or Ethernet Network to Network Interface to reach all locations with VPLS or E-Line connections. If you need this type of connectivity, you may be surprised by how affordable it has become recently. Get Ethernet over MPLS service prices now and see how far your network can really reach.

Benefits Of An MPLS Mesh Network

Once your business has expanded to include additional locations, like branch offices, offsite data centers, factories or warehouses, you need a way to get all those locations on the same network for data, voice or both. The latest and greatest way to do that is the MPLS Mesh Network.

Companies with two locations don’t generally start off with an MPLS network. What they do is buy a point to point T1 line or Ethernet Line service to link the locations. T1 is the traditional P2P telecom service. Ethernet line service is newer and offers the ability to link two LANs at the layer 2 switching level.

So, who needs an MPLS network for two locations? Maybe you do. The reason isn’t that you need the multiple site connectivity that MPLS makes easy. It’s a matter of cost. Depending on the availability of T1 or Ethernet point to point service, you might be better off getting T1 or Ethernet last mile connectivity to a much larger MPLS network. The major incumbent and competitive carriers have regional, nationwide or international service footprints. If your two locations are across the country rather than across town, it’s conceivable that taking advantage of an MPLS network for the long haul span might actually have a cost advantage.

Now, let’s consider the business with 3 or more locations. You can still use the point to point line strategy to link them. If you try to create a mesh network with P2P lines from each location to every other location, you’ll find this topology gets pretty expensive pretty fast. What many companies have done is create a star network with point to point lines radiating out from company headquarters to each remote location. All traffic gets routed through HQ regardless of where it is going.

When you do this, you are effectively becoming your own WAN network provider. It has the advantage of giving you complete control of the network on a instantaneous basis. But it costs you the staffing needed for constant vigilance and the need to establish new long distance P2P lines every time another location is added. The cost goes up linearly as you add locations because there is no economy of scale when it comes to dedicated point to point data lines.

Where you do get economy of scale is by sending your traffic over a privately run MPLS network. All those P2P lines are replaced by access network connections at each location to be served. The lines are only long enough to reach the carrier's local point of presence, and priced accordingly. The carrier then sets up paths through its core network to interconnect your locations as you specify. You can specify which locations can connect to which other locations and how much bandwidth they have available. The MPLS connections can be set up as fully meshed so that every location can interact with every other location.

Beyond that, MPLS networks can easily handle fully converged voice, data and video networks so that you can include your telephone service and video conferencing on the same network. That can be an enormous cost saver for companies with business sites spread over many states, or with international locations included.

Are you paying too much to run your own wide area network to link multiple business sites? Get the quality and performance you require and enjoy a significant cost savings as well when you switch to an MPLS Mesh Network.

Ethernet Port At Your Door

There's an Ethernet port that connects to the outside world. Where is it? It could be as close as your back door. Actually, it could be right there in your telecom closet.

Ethernet WAN (Wide Area Network) service is a fairly new development. Most companies and other organizations are used to getting their outside connections using the traditional telecom network. The same technologies that carry telephone calls have been repurposed to transport digital signals from point to point and as access to the Internet.

You're no doubt familiar with T1 lines. Perhaps you also use DS3 connections or OC3, OC12 or OC48 SONET fiber optic services. Did you know that all of these services got their start carrying telephone calls between phone company central offices? Since they are digital in nature, specialized equipment can do a protocol conversion from the Ethernet that runs on your local networks to the TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) that runs on the public switched telephone network.

Say you want to connect the LANs at two of your business locations. You may order a point to point T1 line to transport the packets between locations at a rate of 1.5 Mbps. If you need more bandwidth to keep the LAN data from having to wait on the WAN connection, you can order DS3 service at 45 Mbps. The protocol conversion will be performed at each end, so that your LANs and the telecom network each have the data in a format they can use.

This methodology works fine, and has been doing so for decades. But now you have another choice. Why not just connect your two LANs together with a very, very long Ethernet connection?

You are probably saying, "Ethernet doesn't work that way. There are strict limitations as to how far you can extend the network."

That's true within your own building or campus. But there is another set of standards that apply to Ethernet that is transported by common carrier over long distances. These long haul connections come under the category of Carrier Ethernet. Within a city, they are often called Metro Ethernet.

There's practically no limit on how far you can connect using Carrier Ethernet. Do you have an office and factory in different parts of town? Connect their networks with a level 2 Metro Ethernet connection. That's right, level 2. You can use network switches to make the connection and keep everything on the same network. You can also set up mesh networks for multiple locations in-town or around the country. How about the Internet? Use a Carrier Ethernet connection to provide your access to the Internet.

But why do that if your old telecom services work just fine? How about paying less, maybe 50% less, for the same connectivity? The higher your bandwidth requirements, the more Ethernet WAN connections can save. The reasons are that Ethernet services are often provided by competitive carriers with modern networks designed from the ground up for efficient IP transport. When they can provide the complete network, including connections to your buildings using EoF (Ethernet over Fiber) or EoC (Ethernet over Copper), the cost savings can be astonishing.

How much can you save? Run a quick check and see what Ethernet WAN services are available for your location.

I, Router

One unexpected blessing from the advance of technology is the development of fabrics that can generate electric power using only the normal motion of the wearer. It does this using nanowires coated with zinc oxide that convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. There's no weird perpetual motion invention here. This is basic high school science that says energy is neither created or destroyed, but can be converted from one form to another with a little effort.

The inventor of this fantastic new product suggests using the technology to make shirts and shoes to power iPods or medical implants. The power density is 80 milliwatts per square meter of fabric. But that's just today. Who knows what future developments will be able to squeeze out of the shirt on your back. A Watt per T-Shirt? Several Watts per lumberjack shirt? This just assumes normal movements. If you happen to have a nervous tic, you could be a walkin' jerkin' generatin' station.

The idea of recharging an iPod while dancing down the street is a good one. Who knows how many tons of CO2 can be spared from the ever-warming atmosphere by lightening the load on those putrid coal fired power plants. But why not go a step further and save our dwindling oil supplies by recharging your hybrid car as you sit at stop lights, jumping to the beat of the latest dance music. In fact, why not just plug yourself in at home and give back to the grid? After all, it's given to us all these years.

Energy independence and environmental protection are excellent applications for the future "power" dresser. But all this electricity on the hoof may help solve a myriad of other societal problems, too. I'm thinking big. I'm thinking universal broadband.

Even at the current state of nanotechnology, we can conceptualize the wearable integrated circuit. Anyone who's enjoyed the soothing warmth of an electric blanket knows that they've been weaving wires into cloth for decades. Now it's time to add a little circuitry. The circuit designs for 802.11a, b, g, and n WiFi transceivers are certainly mature at this point. In fact, they have been miniaturized to fit into cell phones and PDAs. So, too, have mesh networks been perfected. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer includes this capability so that children in undeveloped countries can interconnect their laptops to create a huge wireless network. Only one computer needs to be close to a wireless access point. The others route their packets from computer to computer to share that connection.

The big problem with deploying large scale mesh networks that could provide wide area wireless broadband coverage is the darn power supplies. You either need to mount these on light poles and divert power from the streetlights like municipal WiFi networks do. Or, depend on batteries that are constantly looking for a recharge. The OLPC approach also offers the option of turning a crank to keep the computer running. But how long can you keep every kid doing that before their arms fall off? It would be a great physical fitness program in the United States, except that the chubbiest kids are always the ones who are rich enough to afford MacBook Pros and won't lift a finger beyond opening the lid anyway.

Now, marry the technology of miniaturized wireless transmitters and receivers with power generating fabric and you have as many mobile WiFi nodes as you can get people to wear clothes. Dress 'em up. Send 'em out and the network comes to life. In cities and towns everywhere, available bandwidth comes on line as the day begins. It's densest during the work and school day when the demand for capacity is highest. As night falls and people change into their casual and party clothes, new nodes come on line. Dance clubs and sports arenas may generate enough excess bandwidth to allow couch potatoes the luxury of downloading HD videos as they relax, powerlessly.

With these mesh networks, no man is an island but everyone is a power station, a two-way radio and a router. Being called a "dynamo" has always been a compliment. Now it can really ring true. Referring to someone as "hot" may simply mean that they are active in the network.

Further integration of power, circuitry and fabric could lead to additional technology applications. It's long been a dream of VoIP advocates to bypass the public telephone network and make all their calls for free over the Internet. Why not include network voice features within electronic clothing? Your next coat could be much more than a soft jacket. It could be a softswitch.

And then there is the issue of sparsely populated areas where broadband communications options are needed the most. This is where our friends in the animal kingdom could lend a hoof or paw. Just look at the surface area on a cow's back and you can see the potential for high power transmissions. Polar Bears would be perfect to deploy "white space" transmitters above the Arctic Circle, if Google can get the FCC behind the idea. Other bears could help bring broadband access to the National Parks. Then again, how difficult will it be to get bears to wear jackets? The whole process seems... grizzly at best.