MPLS Networks vs The Internet

By: John Shepler

Businesses with multiple locations have a requirement that single location companies don’t. They need to reliably connect their various offices, factories, warehouses, medical centers or school campuses at a reasonable cost. Let’s take a look at how MPLS networks, private lines, and the Internet can be deployed to do just that:


What it really comes down to is how much network performance is required to support your business activities and what you are willing to pay. If you have stringent demands for high voice quality on outside calls, such as customer service lines, or expect high productivity from your critical cloud services, you need to seriously consider private line or MPLS network solutions. You won’t be happy with what you get from the Internet and it may wind up costing you way more than you save on monthly telecom costs.

On the other hand, if you are a small operation that primarily communicates via email and websites, perhaps with cloud data backup, you may well get by with Internet VPN services. This is especially true if you have more patience than money and need a low cost solution no matter what. You’ll greatly improve your satisfaction level if you employ a dedicated private line as your last mile connection to the Internet. Most Internet issues are caused end user connections that just aren’t designed for demanding needs.

Why not take a few minutes and investigate what’s available in network bandwidth connections for your particular business locations.

A New Edge On Private IP Networks

So many companies have multiple business locations today, that IP network options have become cheaper and more available than ever before. A major player in this space is New Edge Networks, headquartered in Vancouver, Washington. New Edge specialized in private IP-based WANs (Wide Area Networks) that don’t use the public Internet. That gives them the edge on quality and performance in linking multiple business locations.

Why not the Internet? The largest network in the word certainly has proliferated over the last few decades. It connects just about everyone, everywhere on Earth at reasonable connection costs. That’s its advantage as a general purpose communications network and its limitation as a serious business network. Anyone and everyone can and do send just about anything and everything there is through the Internet. With network neutrality mandated, your critical transaction data gets exactly the same treatment as somebody on the other side of the globe Tweeting what they had for lunch.

The need for dependable performance, security and availability is what makes private networks attractive. Private networks are just that. They are privately owned and operated. There is no public access. Being a private entity, they are free to establish classes of service to guarantee that latency sensitive applications like voice and video conferencing have the priority to ensure low jitter and latency for optimum performance. New Edge, for instance offers six classes of service (CoS) on their network with service level agreements for each.

Strict control of network parameters makes possible the long desired goal of network convergence. Convergence merges separate data, voice and video networks into one single network that supports them all. Enterprise VoIP offers productivity features and cost savings, especially on a converged network. But voice is fragile, and your telephone calls can quickly turn to garbled mush on a “best effort” network like the Internet. Video conferencing, including telepresence services, also has great productivity and cost saving value. Like voice, real-time two-way video is fragile and breaks up with the slightest provocation. You need a solid network to support these high performance communication tools.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching private networks, a specialty of New Edge Networks, give your business the opportunity to connect multiple locations on one fully meshed private network. Each location only needs an access network connection to the MPLS “cloud” network. New Edge offers a variety of connection options that include T1 lines, Ethernet, wireless, and even DSL.

Since most small and midsize businesses don’t have large full-time IT staffs to manage wide area network services, New Edge Networks offers full network management services, including the critical LAN/WAN interconnection. This lets companies concentrate on their core business activities while knowing that their wide area network is being well taken care of.

Does your company have more than a couple of business locations? If so, private IP networks may work to your advantage. Find out how you can improve performance and perhaps save money at the same time with high value MPLS network services from New Edge and other top tier service providers.

Why Managed MPLS Networking Services

Let’s say your company has offices located all across the country. Each location has its own private local area network , perhaps supporting computer networking, IP telephony, and video conferencing. As stand-alone facilities, things work great. But your enterprise is more than just a collection of geographically dispersed sites. It is an organization with a common mission and processes.

You decided long ago that you needed to integrate your network facilities to unify the company. There are big efficiency improvements to be gained by not having to support every function at every location. When employees across the country are electronically just as close as those down the hall, you can establish centers of excellence and marshal short term support when there are local overloads.

There’s also the opportunity to avoid toll charges on internal telephone calls when you put your phone system on your own network. That can amount to an enormous cost savings when there is regular communication between sites. Only when you need to go off net, or on to the public switched telephone system, do you pay for local telco lines and, perhaps, toll charges. You can decide whether it makes more sense to have local access at each location or consolidate your lines with ISDN PRI service or SIP trunking.

The trick becomes how to interconnect those far flung business sites. Most companies start out with dedicated point to point T1 lines and move up to faster services, such as Ethernet, DS3 or OC3, as the traffic levels increase. What gets lost in incrementally adding line after line is the opportunity to save cost on WAN network bandwidth. One day you find yourself with a huge portfolio of telecom line charges plus a considerable staff to manage your ad-hoc WAN network.

What’s better? Today’s answer is managed MPLS networking services. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a “cloud” network designed specifically to link multiple locations with specific connections or in a fully meshed network. What characterizes a fully converged MPLS network is scalable bandwidth, privacy of connections, high reliability with fast response when issues do arise, a service footprint that covers all of your locations, and quality of service controls that ensure high performance for time sensitive applications like enterprise VoIP and real-time two-way video conferencing or telepresence.

That sounds like a tall order, but there are a number of top carriers who specialize in offering private networking services with nationwide footprints. It is even possible to include overseas offices through traffic exchange with carriers in foreign countries. Each of your sites is connected to the cloud through an appropriately sized dedicated access connection. From there the network operator programs your connections into the tag servers that manage network traffic. Even though your share the cloud with other customers, your bandwidth is guaranteed and your connections are private. For the ultimate in security, you can choose to encrypt your data during transit.

By turning your WAN network operations over to a MPLS networking carrier, you unload the burden of constant monitoring and network management, but you’ll also likely realize a significant cost savings. Will quality of service suffer? On the contrary, a top tier carrier has more resources at their disposal than you can afford to manage a nationwide network 24/7. They’ll also have far more bandwidth in their core network than makes sense for any single enterprise. That means you can grow your resources to match the growth in your business without incurring extensive construction delays every time you want to increase throughput between locations.

How do you find these high performance network providers? The best way is to go through a telecommunications broker who has a complete suite of carriers available to bid on your business. You can then feel confident that you are getting the best service at the best price, without having to develop the expertise and staff a group to search the industry. That’s all taken care of quickly and easily. How quickly and easily? Take literally a minute to enter an inquiry for managed MPLS networking services and an expert Telarus consultant will be at your service in no time at all.

PAETEC Adds Intrusion Detection For MPLS Networking

MPLS networks are on the ascendant as the preferred solution for linking multiple business locations. Now PAETEC is offering a new service to further enhance the security of its already secure MPLS network solutions by monitoring for network intrusions. What distinguishes this service is that operation and management is largely transparent to users.

Network security has become a hot topic in recent years. We’re all familiar with the constant barrage of viruses, phishing schemes, hacking and other criminal activities on the Internet. You don’t need a connection to the Internet to worry about electronic security. Any company or organization with a computer network is a target for those who think they can benefit from compromising it. No amount of physical security protects your network once it leaves your premises. But to do business today, you need connections to multiple office locations, factories, warehouses, customers and suppliers.

This is where PAETEC, a telecommunications company with a nationwide fiber optic footprint, steps in. Rather than trying to build a meshed network from dedicated point to point lines and then having to install and manage network security appliances and software, you can simply turn the job over to PAETEC. They provide each of your locations with access to their privately-run network cloud. You define how you want each location to communicate. Built-into the network is the new managed Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention System known as IDPS. You don’t need to buy any special on-site equipment or install and maintain any network security software. It’s all built into the PAETEC MPLS network.

How does this system work? It’s a network based firewall with two components. The intrusion detection part inspects all traffic entering and leaving the network to identify suspicious patterns. It notifies the enterprise system administrator with recommendations on how to respond to any threat it finds. The second part is an intrusion prevention system that looks for potential threats and makes recommendations on how to respond before an actual break-in occurs. PAETEC operates a 24/7 Security Operations Center that can handle alarm responses for customers who don’t have their own full time system administrators.

The addition of an IDPS to your WAN network is more than just a good idea. It’s a requirement for sensitive applications such as PCI for credit card transactions and HIPPA for medical records. Health care modernization initiatives are certain to increase the number of locations connected by high speed MPLS networks and in need of industry mandated security.

Are you interested in starting a secure multi-location WAN network or improving the security of the one you have now? Would you like to do that in a cost effective way? If so, you should take a look at the secure MPLS network options from PAETEC and other competitive network service providers.

Networking Multiple Locations

Many businesses, even smaller ones, often have more than one location. So how do you link these various business locations together and back to corporate headquarters?

There are various techniques for doing this. Basically they fall into two categories. You use either a public or a private network to make the links.

The appeal of a public network is made very attractive by the easy access and near universal connections of the Internet. You can pretty much get from anywhere to anywhere over the Internet, with a wide variety of access technologies that range from DSL, Cable broadband, cellular broadband, fixed location wireless, T1 lines, Ethernet and so on. Even dial-up is still an option if your needs for data transfer are very, very modest.

The two big problems with using the Internet to interconnect your business are variable performance and lack of security. The performance issues can be minimized by using professional grade access networks, such as T1 lines. You can use the Internet securely by encrypting your data in a process called tunneling. This creates a VPN or Virtual Private Network over what is actually an insecure public network.

Private networks are as simple as a point to point dedicated T1 line that links two business locations reliably and securely. This line is for your exclusive use. You can add encryption, if you want, for the ultimate in data security.

As you get more business locations, you can link them with additional T1 lines. This gets complex and expensive with many locations, so a star network with headquarters at the center of the star often makes the most sense.

An alternative solution for companies with multiple locations in the same city is Metro Ethernet. Ethernet service can be set up as a point to point data connection or a mesh network that interconnects a number of locations together. Ethernet, where available, offers lower cost and higher bandwidths than traditional telecommunications services.

If you have a business with locations spread across the state or country, even operations outside of the United States, MPLS networking may be your highest performance and lowest cost solution. MPLS is a private networking scheme that offers secure connections with guaranteed bandwidth. It’s becoming the core network technology of many large carrier and can transport just about any protocol you need.

So, which networking approach is best for your business? You can get complementary expert consultation and quick quotes for various options through the T1 Rex business bandwidth site.