Metro Ethernet vs MPLS Networking

In addition to dedicated Internet access, many companies also need point to point private lines and/or multipoint network connections. The classic way to accomplish this has been to lease private lines to create your own wide area network setup. There are two other methods available that can give you the same results for considerably less cost.

Metro Ethernet service has been seen as a way to get point to point connections in town at a lower cost than leasing dedicated line services, such as DS3 or OC3. This service is called E-Line or Ethernet Line. It’s is standardized by the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) so you can compare E-Line services from multiple vendors and know that you are getting the same product.

What’s the difference between ordering an E-Line connection at 50 Mbps versus a DS3 dedicated line at 45 Mbps? When you order a dedicated line, you can envision having a pair of wires going from your headquarters, through a cross-connect at the telco central office and then out to your branch office. That’s probably true for a T1 line provisioned on two twisted copper pair. When you get into DS3 and higher bandwidths, your connection will probably be carried via SONET fiber optic service using an add/drop multiplexer. Along the way, your signal will be traveling with many other who share the same fiber strand.

Here’s what’s important: Unless you actually go out and construct or lease the copper or fiber transmission medium, you are using a shared or multi-tenant service. It’s true with Metro Ethernet and MPLS Networks. It’s also true with dedicated line services. The difference is that MPLS and Metro Ethernet are packet switched networks while T-Carrier and SONET services are circuit switched. With circuit switching, the circuit is used only for your traffic on a single path that is “nailed up” for the time you hold the lease. With packet switching, other traffic can share common paths through the network. That does two things. It lowers the price of the service and it makes some additional services possible.

Metro Ethernet has both an Ethernet Private Line and Ethernet Virtual Private Line service available. The virtualization means that you only need to install one Carrier Ethernet port to have connections with two or more locations. The actual physical line is shared among your own traffic. You may have ten or more branch offices, retail stores or other locations in town. With EVPL you can have point to point connections to many locations coming in through one UNI (User Network Interface).

Here’s another service you can get with Metro Ethernet. It’s called E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service. This is a meshed network that lets many locations all communicate without going through a single point. E-LAN is popular for interconnecting a company’s many independent LANs in the same geographical area. This can be done at the layer 2 level so that the entire network looks like one giant bridged network.

Interconnecting multiple locations is also the domain of MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks. Many of these have regional, national or even international service footprints so that all of your far flung locations can interact on the same network. MPLS may be the solution of choice for covering geographical areas larger than a single city and its suburbs. MPLS can also be used to create point to point connections for only two locations. When those locations are located on opposite coasts or in different countries, MPLS can be a better deal than Ethernet Line service or point to point dedicated line services.

Since Ethernet and MPLS services overlap to some extent, what criteria do you use to make a choice? I’d recommend getting price quotes for these, plus dedicated lines, and comparing the total lease cost for the same bandwidth and other requirements. You can get networking bandwidth quotes from multiple service providers quickly and easily using the GeoQuote tool. In fact, many line services to 1 Gbps quote automatically online.

Multi Protocols Network Services

MPLS, Multi Protocol Label Switching, is a fairly new type of network service that is growing in importance. It is often touted as the future of telecommunications. Let's have a look at why that might be so and how it can benefit your business applications.

The idea behind MPLS is in the name. The "multi protocol" part means that this is a network designed to transport many types of network protocols. The Internet is not multi-protocol. It's based on IP or Internet Protocol. If you want to send something through the internet it has to meet the IP specs.

The PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is also not "multi-protocol" It's based on TDM or Time Division Multiplexing. TDM creates small 64Kbps channels originally designed for digitized telephone calls. Anything else sent through the PSTN has to fit in one or more of those channels. That's true for even the highest speed SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) fiber optic services.

Certainly, we use both the Internet and the PSTN to transport everything from telephone conversations to high definition video. This is done by converting between protocols. Just about anything digital can be sent through any digital network. But there is a price to be paid in equipment cost, time delay or latency, and inefficiency for each of those conversions.

MPLS networks are based on something called label switching. That's the LS in MPLS. Data packets entering a MPLS network are assigned labels that where they are to be routed and the QoS or Quality of Service required. Voice or interactive video packets are time sensitive and sensitive to QoS. General data transfers are not so sensitive to latency and jitter.

The traffic engineering aspect of MPLS networks make them superior to using the Internet for time sensitive applications. An MPLS network is good for transporting telephone calls, video, data transfers, encrypted information and interactive data. Everything enteres through an ingress router that assigns it one or more tags. Everything leaves through an egress router that removes the tags. While traversing the network, only the tags are examined by the tag routers. The original packets themselves do not need to be inspected because everything the network needs to function is defined in the tags themselves.

MPLS networks are especially good for companies and other organizations with multiple locations. The network cloud can provide a mesh network where any location can talk to any other location. Or you can define who gets to connect to who. It's almost like having your own private network, but a lot cheaper. The service provider ensures that you get the bandwidth and connections you need to ensure that other users will not impact the performance of your service.

There are many competitive telecom service providers offering MPLS network services in competition to the traditional telcos. How do you find them? The easy way is to use a telecom brokerage service that represents a dozen or more carriers, so you can get the best price for the network services that meet your needs. Shop For MPLS is such a service and offers complementary consulting as well as fast and accurate price quotes. Request an MPLS quote in under 2 minutes, right now.