MPLS & VPLS Consulting Blog Improve WAN performance for Citrix, ERP, Interactive Applications and SaaS with MPLS and VPLS

WAN Accelerators are wonderful tools in improving your network performance, provided your traffic can benefit from this technology.

If you obtain an MPLS network, your network performance will be better than a VPN over the internet.  But you need to select your Classes of Service appropriately.  Different CoS levels have different packet loss SLAs.  On a simple level, the SLAs might be:

• Basic CoS: 99.9% packet delivery
• Middle CoS: 99.99% packet delivery
• Best CoS: 99.999% packet delivery

If you decide to subscribe to all Basic CoS, the SLA is 99.9% packet delivery.  That is typically the same as an uncongested internet access circuit, so you might not see any performance improvement.  But if you use your WAN Accelerator with the Middle CoS with 99.99% packet delivery, you will experience a more noticeable improvement.  Obviously, the Basic CoS will work better than the internet when the internet is congested, since the MPLS network avoids those bottlenecks.

When using a WAN Accelerator, since you are using compression, if your compression ratio is 20:1, if you lose 1 packet, you are really losing 20 or more packets.  So you maximize performance with a network that has less packet loss/better packet delivery.

To reduce or eliminate the number of undelivered packets, select a higher CoS.

One thing you should be aware of, that is not widely publicized is that the lower level Class of Service levels

When you are deciding on an MPLS network carrier, an important thing to consider is the router that will be provided, assuming that you want fully managed services.  This is a subject that many people are unclear on. 

Many carriers will provide a Cisco 1841 in their quotation.  The primary reason being cost.  Some carriers will quote a Cisco 2811.  While the cost is a bit higher, so in the expandability and performance.  While this blog is not intended to be a technical hardware discussion, the general subject of MPLS networks warrants a brief message about this topic.

Cisco 1841:

1. List: $995 (depending on configuration)
2. Memory (Std/Max): F: 32/128 and D:128/384
3. LAN: 1 E/FE
4. WAN Card Slots: 2 (data only)
5. Network Module Slots: none
6. Advanced Integration Module Slots: 1
7. Digital Signal Processing Slots: none
8. USB Ports: 1 (for USB Flash configuration)
9. Form Factor: shelf
10. Power supply redundancy: none
11. Voice support: none
12. Fast/CEF Switching: 38.40Mbps with 64 byte packets

Cisco 2811

1. List: $1750 (depending on configuration)
2. Memory (Std/Max): F: 64/256 and D:256/768
3. LAN: 2 E/FE
4. WAN Card Slots: 4 HWIC/VWIC/WIC/VIC (Hardware WAN Interface Card/Voice WIC/WIC/Voice Interface Card)
5. Network Module Slots: 1
6. Advanced Integration Module Slots: 2
7. Digital Signal Processing Slots: 2
8. USB Ports: 2 (for USB Flash configuration)
9. Form Factor: rack
10. Power supply redundancy: RPS-675 (optional power supply)
11. Voice support: DSP/NM
12. Maximum CCUE phones:  36
13. Max SRST Phones: 36
14. Fast/CEF Switching: 61.44 Mbps with 64 byte packets

To summarize:

1. The 1841 is suitable for a single T1 or E1.  If you plan on using VoIP or growing to NxT1 or NxE1, select a better router.
2. The 2811 is suitable for two T1s or E1s and supports voice.  It’s little brother the 2801 has less memory and less expansion slots, with a base configuration for a single T1 or E1.
3. If your growth requirements will be greater, get the right router from the start to allow your upgrades to be painless and avoid any unexpected capital purchases.
4. There are other router manufacturers than Cisco, so consider your options in full.
5. Carrier provided routers and management will cost you more than leasing and managing the routers yourself, providing you have the resources to do it yourself.  Managed routers eliminate the management headache.

MPLS networks have become quite the buzz word, these days. Recognition for manageability of MPLS networks is well deserved.  But if you have only one or two remote locations across the globe, is MPLS the best solution?  In a word (two?): perhaps not.

MPLS networks make the most economic sense with networks with more than two nodes.  For a simple point-to-point network, an International Private Line (IPL) may be more cost effective and provide the needed quality of service.

First off, an IPL is dedicated clear channel bandwidth.  It is your private network, usually, with no management, i.e. it’s all yours.  Using your routers, you configure your network and traffic shaping as you desire.  By the same token, in many cases, the carrier is not in a position to ping your router to see if it is alive, simply because your IPL is completely private, so they can’t!  None-the-less, this is a perfectly logical approach to a point-to-point network.

While an IPL can be considered a point-to-point circuit, in reality, there can be plenty of redundancy built into the carrier infrastructure to protect you from cable cuts and failures.  But you need to ask the carrier about this, since automatic switching to alternative paths is an extra option with some carriers.  Many carriers offer multiple layers of protection with SDH self-healing architecture for automatic recovery and rerouting.

 In addition to IPL, another option is EIPL, which is Ethernet Private Leased Lines.  More on that in the future.

If you use video conferencing, an MPLS network with improve the quality of your performance enormously.  Since this type of network has Quality of Service, you will eliminate freeze frame, blur and disconnects that running video over the internet can experience.

But if you have a private wide area network, how will you dial other video conference systems that use the internet, not your private network.  There are a few solutions to this dilemma. 

 First, some MPLS VPN carriers will provide firewalled internet gateways to your network.  These can be configured to allow only the ports needed for your video conference calls.  An alternative is the use of a carrier provided video conference bridging service that will then dial the desired devices on the internet.

Quality of Service or QoS is the quality of a call over a network. It also refers to the ability to prioritize certain types of traffic on an IP network. In the case of VoIP, this typically means prioritizing voice traffic at a higher level than other forms of traffic such as data so that voice traffic will not be delayed or dropped.  An MPLS network will allow you to prioritize this data ahead of all other data traffic in order to maintain quality.

Latency causes delays in packet delivery. Physical distance, the number of router hops, encryption, and voice/data conversion all impact latency. Users begin noticing latency as a service level issue when roundtrip latency is greater than 250 milliseconds (ms). The International Telecommunications Union recommends that latency never exceed 300 ms round-trip.  Over long distances, i.e. from the USA to Asia, the shortest path circuit and least number of hops can make the difference between satisfactory and unsatisfactory voice communications.

Jitter occurs when voice packets are sent and received with timing variations. Jitter is effectively a variation of packet delay where delays actually impact the quality of the conversation. Think of jitter as variable delays in packet delivery. Participants will notice delays in the conversations impacted by jitter. As a result, many service providers now account for maximum jitter levels.

Packet Loss takes place when packets are dropped.  This can be due to a variety of factors and is very common when using VoIP over the internet, with or without a VPN tunnel. It usually shows up as dropped conversations or “tinny” sounds. Packet loss should never exceed 1% and most service providers guarantee service levels with .5% or less packet loss. Packet loss of 1% translates into one voice clip or skip every three minutes, while packet loss of .25% translates into one error every 53 minutes.  When latency is high, packet loss is often high, as well.

Prioritizing VoIP traffic over the network at Layers 2 and 3 yields latency and jitter improvements. Policy based network management, bandwidth reservation, Type of Service, Class of Service, and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) are all widely used techniques for prioritizing VoIP traffic at Layers 2 and 3.  VPLS networks will provide the highest level of quality available, where appropriate.

When procuring an MPLS network for mission critical applications, many people tend to focus on Service Level Agreements.  SLA’s address compensation for performance shortcomings.  But take a serious look at the network provider’s backbone.

The network backbone is critical to performance.  The best performance will come from a dedicated MPLS backbone with a minimal number of AS numbers.

Some carriers will share a variety of network services on a single backbone to get a better return on their investment.  For instance, using VLANs, a carrier can run their internet network on the same backbone as their MPLS network.  Everything is segregated and the MPLS network is secure from any internet traffic.  Guess what happens if their router receives a Denial of Service Attack from the Internet?  You guessed it!  Your MPLS network performance can go to a crawl.  So while the MPLS network is secure, it’s performance might not be.

Ask the hard questions and understand what you are dealing with.  Or, just give us a call!

A new client called this morning.  They were a smaller sized business and  were looking for a 45Mbps MPLS network.  When I asked what they needed that bandwidth for, they explained that they were in the online printing business. “Now I understand!”  They needed to be able to grow to over 100Mbps in the future.  So this is what motivated this simple block entry.

To start, you can get as much bandwidth as you are willing to pay for.  For local loops, this is what the options are:

DSL loop: 1.5M download and 384K upload

T1: 1.54Mbps

E1: 2Mbps (not in USA)

DS-3: 44.736Mbps

OC-3: 155.52Mbps

OC-12: 622Mbps

OC-48: 2.88Gbps

OC-192: 9.953Gbps

Ethernet: Depending on availability: up to 100Mbps of 10Gbps

We had a conference call with a potential client today that is interested in an MPLS network for their twenty offices in the USA and Canada.  As usual, I asked them “why”? “Our network performance is poor and we understand MPLS is the best for WANs”.

After a series of questions, I learned that this company does a large amount of file transfers from their many offices to the central data center.  No interactive apps.  No video.  No voice. They use Cisco hardware VPNs over the internet. 

Average file size: 60Mbps

Typical bandwidth per office: T1

Home office bandwidth: 15Mbps

Can you see where this is going?  Never start the process of building a new network without understanding exactly what is happening on your network today.  Would MPLS with the same bandwidth help this company? Probably not.  What do they need?  They need to analyze their network traffic.  This involved packet sniffing and logging with software such as NTOP and MRTG.  If you don’t know how to do this, pay a consulting company such as MPLS-Experts to do it for you.

How can you cost justify paying a consultant?  Because you will end up with the network you really need and pay no more than you should.  Overprovisioning is easy, but expensive.  Underprovisioning will make you or your carrier look bad.  Get the help to do the job correctly.  We may be the MPLS-Experts, but we tell many of our clients to use internet VPN with the correct bandwidth if that is what their applicaton requirements suggest.

ATLANTIC-ACM, a leading telecommunications research consultancy and benchmarking firm, announced today the general availability of its 2008 Global Wholesale Carrier Report Card, the fifth edition of the international wholesale communications industry’s chief benchmarking study.

“Overall satisfaction with carriers has increased,” said Fedor Smith, ATLANTIC-ACM Vice President. “As the gaps in key service and operational areas have narrowed, price has become increasingly important in buying decisions.”

Is a wholesale carrier for you?  Buying wholesale can reduce your costs signficantly.  Depending on your billing volume, you can find that you will receive BETTER service from a wholesale carrier. This is because your service is aggregated with many other customers of the wholesaler, which is ultimately a very large customer of the underlying carrier. 

For instance, let’s say you will bill $20,000/month on your network.  In the whole scheme of things, you are not a big customer in the eyes of AT&T or Verizon.  But if you buy from a wholesaler who bills $2,000,000/month (at wholesale prices) with either carrier, then they have some power to get top quality service.  So if you have a network issue, you file a trouble ticket with the wholesaler whose system it tied into the carrier.  Being such a big customer, your ticket gets a higher priority from a dedicated team.

As your billing volume rises, then the benefits go down, unless you reach a point where your volume is so high that you can be your own wholesaler.  But that carries its own headaches.

Working with MPLS-Experts can help you learn about all your options.  Because we are carrier-neutral, our procurement experts will price out and explain all your options.  We will also help to assure that you obtain the right network configuration for your requirements.

Virtual private LAN service (VPLS) is a way to provide Ethernet based multipoint to multipoint communication over IP/MPLS networks. It allows geographically dispersed sites to share an Ethernet broadcast domain by connecting sites through Pseudo-Wires.

VPLS is a switched network, not a routed network.  This results in lower latency and dramatically lower jitter, on the order of 250 micro-seconds, as compared to 2 - 10 milli-seconds.  VPLS delivers Ethernet to your door, with the entire network carried via Ethernet as a VLAN on the carrier network.  This makes it very easy to increase bandwidth and manage your network without the need to submit tickets to the carrier and sometimes wait days or weeks for changes.

While Ethernet can be delivered anywhere by encapsulation on TDM, it is most cost effective when the majority of your network locations are in fiber-lit buildings.  This allows the use of Ethernet from door-to-door.

Who can benefit from VPLS?  While the qualifications are not exact, in general, companies that:

• Need the very best possible network performance
• Are less price sensitive and have greater budgets
• Need at least 3Mbps bandwidth per location
• Have in-house network expertise for management

The above qualifications usually point to: financial services, call centers, law firms and Fortune 500 companies; users where a few ms less latency and lower jitter will make a noticeable difference.  But if your sites are in lit buildings, you might find that VPLS may not cost more than MPLS, if your bandwidth requirements are higher.

If VPLS might be suitable for your network, contact MPLS-Experts to discuss your requirements and obtain pricing.

When planning your Wide Area Network, resiliency or backup options are something to consider.  Depending on the resultant impact that a network failure might cause, your options are different.  As well, your budget will affect your decision on this subject.

1. Backup via internet VPN is one cost effective option, depending on your company size and resultant manageability. 

2. Single Router and access line, with ISDN dial-up, will provide redundancy should the local loop or any portion of the access connection other then the customer router fail.  This also provided automatic re-routing, a more robust (and expensive) solution.

3. Dual Router with single or dual Access Lines, protects you if a router failure occurs.  With a second access line providing an additional degree of protection.  Dual diversity is important, to require that the loop follow a different pole path to a different central office.

4. Microwave internet VPN: this surprisingly affordable service is great in areas where it is offered since it eliminates the local loop issue.

5. Cellular Access Points:  another redundancy option that eliminates the physical risk of the local loop.  This option obviously requires that cellular data access be available at the specified location.

A construction and maintenance agreement (C&MA) to build the first direct, high-bandwidth optical-fiber submarine cable system from the UK to India, has been signed by 16 telecom companies. The Europe India Gateway (EIG) Cable is forecast to cost over $700 million and will dramatically improve capacity and diversity of these regions.

The companies investing in the project are:

AT&T;Bharti Airtel; BT; Cable &Wireless; Djibouti Telecom; Du; Gibtelecom; IAM; Libyan Post, Telecom and Information Technology Company; MTN Group Ltd; Omantel; PT Comunicacoes, S.A.; Saudi Telecom Company; Telecom Egypt; Telkom SA Ltd; and Verizon Business.

The EIG is a 9,325 mile system connecting three continents, with 13 landing points planned in the UK, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, United Arab Emirates and India. It is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2010 and will also provide interconnection with other main cable systems connecting Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.

The system will  use next-generation technology designed to provide up to 3.84Tb/s using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) to provide upgradeable transmission facilities supporting Internet, e-commerce, video, data and voice services.

The EIG Consortium has also signed a supply contract with Alcatel-Lucent and Tyco Telecommunications for the cable system’s construction.

When a company needs an MPLS network for a large number of domestic locations (think retail) the cost of T1 local loops can make the cost of such an implementation cost prohibitive.  For many areas, DSL loops might be the perfect solution.

Using DSL for the local loop is not the same as your DSL internet connection.  The technology is the same, but your circuit joins the MPLS carrier at the DSLAM.  The result is a dramatic reduction in cost and reasonably good circuit stability.

DSL loops can have SLAs of 99.95% uptime, versus T1 SLAs of 99.99% uptime.  But time to restore a DSL circuit may take longer than a T1.  As with any business decision, you need to measure the cost versus the benefits.  For retail, dial-up can be used for back-up to support credit card authorization.

Not every carrier offers DSL loops.  But if you have a lot of locations and your upload bandwidth requirements are 512K or less, this might be a suitable solution for your organization.  Since this access method is not available everywhere, you should expect to still use some T1s in isolated areas.  But the total cost of your network is what really matters.

Some companies realize that they can reduce their WAN costs by moving to a different MPLS carrier, but the thought of managing such a project can be overwhelming with limited IT staff resources.  But inertia takes hold and it is human nature to just keep things the way they are and make no changes at all.

Outsourcing this entire project management and implementation process is so affordable, that the savings will usually pay for the out-sourced costs in short order.  Since the new network will have identical IP and routing schemes, the process can be easily managed, ending simply with a change of connection from the old router LAN port to the new router LAN port. 

 This is the process that is typically involved:

1. Telephone meeting to discuss your present network and any changes that will be effective on the new network, such as Class of Services to be applied to different applications on your network.  We can advise you on the Class of Service planning.  The action items from this meeting will be the following:
A. Visio diagram of your network
B. Clear IP numbering scheme and routing rules for your network.  If you already have a WAN, this information can be obtained with read-only access from your present routers, which MPLS-Experts can obtain with your authorization.
C. Contact person at each facility.
D. Information to complete the CoS templates for the new network.

2. If you are paying for managed services, the carrier will ship routers that are ready to plug-and-play based on the above information.  If you are using routers that you own, then package and ship routers to our facility for configuration.  MPLS-Experts will:
A. Upload latest IOS
B. Add base configuration to allow plug-and-play with the ability to access the router via your present  network or modem for troubleshooting as needed.

3. Arrange date and time window to install routers at each location.  Our field technicians can be scheduled to do the installation or your staff can do this, if you have the resources.  Routers will be delivered prior to the arranged date.

4. Arrange VPN or Citrix access to your network to permit MPLS-Experts access to the routers after they are installed.5. At agreed upon time, the routers will be connected to network and the circuits turned on.  This process is performed with the carrier technician while on a conference call.  If everything runs smoothly, the process will take no more than twenty minutes for each location.

The engineers at MPLS-Experts have implemented network migrations of this nature with locations all over the world.    All the engineers are CCIE certified and have a reasonable hourly rate.  For circuits procured through MPLS-Experts, the project manager service is at no charge. 

When obtaining price quotations for new MPLS networks, intuition may tell you to reuse the routers that you may already have installed on your network.  What is common sense is not always true, if you want managed services.

Carriers provide managed services to remove the headache of network management (and add money to their bottom line).  Many carriers will only manage routers that they supply the customer.  This might seem unfair, but if they are managing thousands of routers around the world, it becomes “unmanageable” if they are managing dozens of different router and router configurations.  Their economy of scales require standardization.

On the other hand, if you have rather standard routers, such as Cisco 1841, 2811, 3222 then the use of these routers could be a negotiating point in getting the carrier to manage them.  Just be sure that you keep your Smartnet subscription up to date. But if your routers are old, start fresh.  Too much is riding on your network.

FutureNet: MPLS, Ethernet and Beyond (formerly MPLScon)  will be held in Boston from April 14 - 17.  This conference addresses the future of communications services from enterprise, service provider, and vendor prospectives.  Now in its eighth year, FutureNet continues to evolve from its roots as an event focused strictly on MPLS and related technologies.  This year’s FutureNet once again broadens its focus to cover the present and future of enterprise and consumer communications services including MPLS and Ethernet transport services, voice and SIP trunking, evolution of wireless services, video, and network and performance management.  In addition, FutureNet explores issues such as network neutrality, service-provider/enterprise demarcation, international challenges, and new triple and quadruple play offerings. 

To learn more:

http://www.futurenetexpo.com/attend/conf_overview.html

If you are interested in attending this conference, we can provide a 20% discount coupon,  Just click on Contact Us at the top right of this page.

Many companies use Terminal Server or Citrix widely, for good reason.  When accessing a server remotely via an Internet VPN, performance can vary tremendously.  In some cases, performance can degrade to a point where sessions freeze or disconnect…and who gets blamed?

Over a Terminal Server RDP connection, there are multiple applications (for example video, clipboard, printer output etc) that send data over the connection from server to client.  On a congested or high latency connection these applications compete for available bandwidth.  As a result, important graphics data, such as the location of a window the user moves on the desktop, has to compete with data transmitted in the background, like a print job or a file copy. This problem manifests itself most severely when printing a large document over such a connection. The printer data competes for available bandwidth with the video rendering, thus deteriorating the graphics rendering significantly.  Drive mappings and the applications accessed have an effect, as well.

A general “industry” number for RDP bandwidth requirements is around 30Kbps per user, but a lot depends on the features used, screen resolution and color depth and the frequency of of print jobs.  But this 30Kbps number does not include other activity that may take place on the network: http, smtp, rpc, VoIP, etc.  So plan for more.

With an Internet VPN, all the traffic on the WAN connection is in competition with eachother, unless you have excess bandwidth. Using MPLS, you can prioritize your RDP sessions to assure stable performance for all users on your WAN, without the need of unnecessarily wasting money on excess bandwidth.

Erratic performance wastes employee time and costs real money to a company.  A high performance MPLS network makes a great deal of sense for companies that widely use RDP for interoffice applications or for SaaS services.

Sprint and China Telecom have agreed to implement multiple MPLS network-to-network interconnections in the Asia Pacific region so Sprint customers can benefit from congestion free connectivity to China.

China Telecom is the largest China based carrier with coverage in 200 cities with 600 routers in the country.  With ownership of Trans-Pacific undersea cable infrastructure, China Telecom is able to deliver connectivity from China to the USA entirely on their own network.

If your company has facilities in China, contact us for a network discussion and to obtain recommendations and MPLS price quotations from a variety of suitable carriers.

Global Crossing has announced that it is expanding its MPLS Class Of Service (CoS) offering to six levels.  This will increase the granularity that its customers can fine tune their MPLS network.  This particularly benefits users of both voice and video, since both previously shared the same premium time-sensitive CoS, but now both can remain time-sensitive, with voice having priority over video.

Gary Breauninger, chief marketing officer said, “Having six classes of service gives our enterprise customers a greater ability to ensure uninterrupted transmission of their most time-sensitive and important data, allowing them to control IP VPN performance as they increasingly rely on a single IP-based platform for real-time and converged applications.”

The increased number of CoS levels will have no effect on their MPLS Prices.

It’s always satisifying when your efforts are recognized. Information Week recently interviewed me regarding the complexities of obtaining an MPLS network to connect North America to Asia. There are a lot more issues than mpls price quotes, as you can imagine. For copyright reasons, please click this link to go directly to Information Week:

Top Seven Tips on How to Navigate An Overseas MPLS Contract

Want to Expand Overseas? take a Fast PoP to China. Carriers and experts weigh in on establishing a presence in Asia.

Enjoy!