MPLS and VPLS Procurement and Engineering Experts
MPLS and VPLS Networks, Knowledge, Quotations, Best Prices, Carrier Independent
It’s always satisifying when your efforts are recognized. Information Week interviewed Steve Garson, regarding the complexities of obtaining an MPLS network to connect North America to Asia. There are a lot more issues than 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
Enjoy!
An enterprise end-user survey indicates that enterprises have a good understanding of different types of Ethernet service configurations available in the market. Key findings from the survey include:
Conclusions of this survey indicated the following:
When you sign a contract with a carrier, the purpose is to set forth the material terms of your agreement. There is really no purpose in signing the contract if one of the parties can change the terms at their discretion, especially of they can change those terms without even telling you.
Next time you see www.carriername.com in a contract, you should immediately think www.idontcareaboutyou.com and react accordingly.
It can be difficult, unless you have an experienced telecom attorney, to get these web site references removed from your contract. If you are determined, none-the-less, to do business with such a carrier, there are a few things you can do to at least mitigate some of the risks. You should demand the following:
Your contracts should be fair and equitable and share risk. Contracts with Web site references are ambiguous and subject you to unilateral changes from the “service guide”. They mean nothing but trouble.
Data from TeleGeography’s Global Bandwidth Research Service reveal that demand for international bandwidth grew 45 percent in 2011, and at a compounded rate of 57 percent annually between 2007 and 2011. Although growth has slowed since 2008, when network capacity increased nearly 70 percent, the pace remains brisk, with aggregate capacity requirements more than doubling every two years.
The rate of growth varies widely by region, and has been fastest on links to less-developed regions. Between 2007 and 2011, international bandwidth usage in the Middle East grew at a compounded rate of 98 percent annually, from 148 Gbps to 2.3 Tbps. Over the same time period, Africa’s international bandwidth usage increased 85 percent annually, to 677 Gbps, and Latin America’s international bandwidth usage grew 71 percent, to 5.6 Tbps.
International bandwidth requirements in Asia and Europe grew at a compounded rate of more than 55 percent between 2007 and 2011, while international bandwidth demand in North America and Oceania grew 47 percent. Although international bandwidth usage growth is slower in these mature markets, their capacity requirements are far larger than those of emerging markets. North America’s international bandwidth usage is nearly 10 times greater than that of the entire Middle East, while used capacity connected to Norway is greater than that connected to all of the countries in Africa.
Broadband subscriber growth is the primary driver of bandwidth demand in the Middle East and Africa, where the number of subscribers grew from 9.4 million to 19.4 million between 2007 and 2011, and in Asia, where broadband subscriptions doubled to 250 million over the same period. While broadband subscriber growth has slowed in Latin America, Europe, and North America, bandwidth demand in these regions has been fueled by increases in average broadband access speeds, enabling more frequent use of high-bandwidth applications such as video.
We all use Ethernet as the network protocol of choice for our local area networks. For wide area networks, or WANS, the choices today have been Frame Relay, ATM and MPLS.
With Ethernet advantages like efficiency and low cost, carriers and users have embraced it as the future of the WAN. WAN speeds using Ethernet are currently into the multiple gigabits per second range and increasing. But if your organization has traditionally used non-Ethernet WAN services, how do you decide if a migration makes sense? Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of Ethernet for your WAN.
The evolution of Ethernet and WAN connectivity
While MPLS is widespread, Ethernet penetration of the WAN market has been growing in recent years. Even with dramatically cheaper prices for T-1 channels (i.e., $150 to $400 per month), the costs for Ethernet WAN service are very favorable (as little as $5 per megabyte, compared to T-1 at $200 to $300 per megabyte). The rapid acceptance of 10 Gigabit Ethernet service is a testament to Ethernet’s acceptance by the WAN and metropolitan area network communities. In reality, it’s likely Ethernet and MPLS will coexist and become increasingly difficult to decide between.
Ethernet versus MPLS versus others
Virtual private networks and their routing protocols can be managed two ways: by you or your carrier. In either case, the protocol of choice has been MPLS, as it can be used either at Layer 2 (where you control the routing) or Layer 3 (where carriers control the routing). By contrast, Ethernet is a Layer 2 protocol that gives users (and carriers if they are providing the service) routing control.
Ethernet advantages – Bandwidth
There are many advantages to Ethernet WAN protocols assuming high-speed (10 GbE and 100 GbE). For example, if your organization has several buildings or sites connected in a campus or metropolitan area, 10 GbE can be a cost-effective way to link these sites. This is because 10 GbE is a full-duplex protocol and is fully compatible with any Ethernet-based network. The 10 GbE standard, which also supports single-mode and multi-mode fiber systems, is expected to be compatible with twisted-pair copper, and can connect to SONET and SDH wide area networks. An all-Ethernet infrastructure greatly simplifies the entire network management process, because every device uses essentially the same protocol to communicate. By contrast, situations where multiple protocols coexist in the WAN mean that network management and diagnostic systems must be compatible with all protocols in use for network administrators to analyze network performance. The ultimate Ethernet advantage is high-speed, low-latency end-to-end communications.
Ethernet advantages – Speed
For most users, the 10 GbE standard will probably be entirely sufficient for most WAN and MAN applications, but very large users with heavy bandwidth and low latency requirements should find the 40 or 100 GbE standard worth considering.
Decision criteria for Ethernet on WANs
When examining other Ethernet or VPLS advantages and disadvantages for WAN connectivity, consider the following:
When pricing a global MPLS or VPLS wide area cable network, the cost of international bandwidth has a dramatic effect on the pricing of circuits. This is why connectivity to Asia or South America is so much more expensive that domestic circuits in the USA or circuits from the USA to Europe. TeleGeography is a research company that compiles all this pricing data, in addition to offering some wonderful maps.
A recent wave of new submarine cable builds and upgrades to existing cable systems has brought an influx of submarine cable capacity to many historically high cost markets, including Africa, the Middle East, Southern Asia, and Latin America. Nevertheless, new data from TeleGeography show that vast regional disparities persist in both price levels and rates of decline.
New cable builds in Asia have greatly increased both supply and competition in the region, driving down prices. Median lease prices for a 10 Gbps wavelength between Los Angeles and Tokyo fell 35 percent between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012, and at a compounded rate of 33 percent between Q1 2009 and Q1 2012. Prices of 10 Gbps wavelengths between Hong Kong and Singapore fell 10 percent between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012, to $43,935 per month, and declined at a compounded 31 percent annually between Q1 2009 and Q1 2012.
Navigating the procurement of a global MPLS network is complicated unless you do this work on a daily basis, since you don’t have benchmark pricing or insight into all the global cable system. Using MPLS-Experts to manage this process can not only save you money, but reduce the the time required to manage this process. In many cases, we have been able to provide twice the bandwidth the customer would have obtained if they managed the process on their own. To learn more, visit this link or contact us.
U.S. regulators have approved the merger between Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing, the companies announced Thursday.
Level 3 and Global Crossing said the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission have approved the deal.
Broomfield, Colo.-based Level 3 expects to close on the acquisition as early as next week.
The $3 billion merger will create a global communications company with ownership over networks in more than 50 countries and connections to more than 70 nations, and Level 3 has said the acquisition would allow it to better serve enterprises, content providers, carriers and governments throughout North America, Latin America and Europe.
| Process Switching | Process Switching | Fast/CEF Switching | Fast/CEF Switching | |
| Platform | PPS | Mbps | PPS | Mbps |
| 14xx | 600 | 0.3072 | 4,000 | 2.05 |
| 160x(-R) | 600 | 0.3072 | 4,000 | 2.05 |
| 1701 | 1,700 | 0.8704 | 12,000 | 6.14 |
| 1710 | 1,300 | 0.6656 | 7,000 | 3.58 |
| 1711-1712 | 1,700 | 0.8704 | 13,500 | 6.91 |
| 1720 | 1,400 | 0.7168 | 8,500 | 4.35 |
| 1721 | 1,700 | 0.8704 | 12,000 | 6.14 |
| 1750 | 1,400 | 0.7168 | 8,500 | 4.35 |
| 1751 | 1,500 | 0.768 | 12,000 | 6.14 |
| 1760 | 1,700 | 0.8704 | 16,000 | 8.19 |
| 1801-1812 | 70,000 | 35.84 | ||
| 1841 | 75,000 | 38.4 | ||
| 1861 | 146,142 | 74.82 | ||
| 1941 | 299,000 | 153.08 | ||
| 2500 | 800 | 0.4096 | 4,400 | 2.25 |
| 261x | 1,500 | 0.768 | 15,000 | 7.68 |
| 262x | 1,500 | 0.768 | 30,000 | 15.36 |
| 265x | 2,000 | 1.024 | 40,000 | 20.48 |
| 2691 | 7,400 | 3.7888 | 70,000 | 35.84 |
| 2801 | 3,000 | 1.536 | 90,000 | 46.08 |
| 2811 | 3,000 | 1.536 | 120,000 | 61.44 |
| 2821 | 11,500 | 5.888 | 170,000 | 87.04 |
| 2851 | 15,000 | 7.68 | 220,000 | 112.64 |
| 3620 | 2,000 | 1.024 | 20,000-40,000 | 10-20 |
| 2901 | 327,000 | 167.42 | ||
| 2911 | 353,000 | 180.73 | ||
| 2921 | 480,000 | 245.76 | ||
| 2951 | 580,000 | 296.96 | ||
| 3640 | 4,000 | 2.048 | 50-70,000 | 25.6-36 |
| 3660 | 12,000 | 6.144 | 100-120,000 | 51.2-61.4 |
| 3631 | 4,000 | 2.048 | 50-70,000 | 25.6-36 |
| 3725 | 100-120,000 | 51.2-61.4 | ||
| 3745 | 225-250,000 | 25.6-36 | ||
| 3810 | 2,000 | 1.024 | 8,000 | 4.10 |
| 3810-V3 | 3,000 | 1.536 | 15,000 | 7.68 |
| 3825 | 25,000 | 12.8 | 350,000 | 179.20 |
| 3845 | 35,000 | 17.92 | 500,000 | 256.0 |
| 3925 | 833,000 | 426.49 | ||
| 3945 | 982,000 | 502.78 | ||
| 4000 | 1,800 | 0.9216 | 14,000 | 7.17 |
| 7120 | 13,000 | 6.656 | 175,000 | 89.60 |
| 7140 | 20,000 | 10.24 | 300,000 | 153.60 |
| 7200-NPE100 | 7,000 | 3.584 | 100,000 | 51.20 |
| 7200-NPE150 | 10,000 | 5.12 | 150,000 | 76.80 |
| 7200-NPE175 | 9,000 | 4.608 | 177,848 | 91.06 |
| 7200-NPE200 | 13,000 | 6.656 | 200,000 | 102.40 |
| 7200-NPE225 | 13,000 | 6.656 | 233,170 | 119.38 |
| 7200-NPE300 | 20,000 | 10.24 | 353,000 | 180.74 |
| 7300-NSE-100 | 3,500,000(PXF) | 1,792 | ||
| 7600-MSFC2 | 20,000 | 10.24 | 30,000,000 | 1,792 |
| ASR1000-PRE4 | 10,000,000 | 5,120 | ||
| 12000(Engine 6) | 50,000,000 | 20,000 | ||
| CRS-1 LC | 80,000,000 | 40,960 |
I am working with a client right now that needs a 30Mbps private network to Asia. They have a collocation facility in the US that will connect via this circuit to a collo facility in Hong Kong.
When businesses select collo facilities, they rarely think about proximity to a telecom hotel. Why, you ask? Because the local loop between the carrier and the collo facility is a significant part of your network cost. For this example, the circuit cost came in at $8,200/mo, in large part, because of the local loop cost.
If the client used a collo facility that was also a telecom hotel, the cost went down to $3,850/mo, a difference of $53,200/year! The same logic applies to selecting new office locations: consider your local loop costs.
An independent consulting firm like MPLS-Experts can help you make the right decisions so that your long term objective are considered for your business.
For years, we have been accustomed to local loops being delivered by multiples of T1 or E1 circuits. Then came fiber, which opened up Ethernet access. For businesses that do not have fiber delivered to their building, Ethernet over Copper provides a fine option. If your requirements are a 2xT1 or greater, then EoC offers a cost effective and scalable option.
Once a carrier lights a particular central office, all businesses within the distance limitations (about 12,000 feet/3657 meters, depending on the speed of bandwidth required) can immediately, and for the first time, get Ethernet services. EoC doesn’t support more than 10mbps for most businesses, so it’s not a great option for customers looking for 100mbps Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet speeds. But for the average business customer it’s a perfect fit. The price points are also very aggressive so that a customer can get 10mbps of EoC for about the same price as 3mbps of bonded T1s.
Where Ethernet is available, it is only a matter of time before the T1 dies as an access methodology.
Recent Comments