Copper for Ethernet Access to VPLS and MPLS Networks

April 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Ethernet access does not require fiber.  But this technology offers excellent scalability for VPLS and MPLS network access.

For the full year 2012, the global Ethernet access device (EAD) market grew 3.5 per cent, to $860 million, with growth slowing as a result of the economy and a drop in carrier spending.

“People keep saying that copper’s dead, but it’s not-it. It has a limited but important role for Ethernet services, as evidenced by the continued growth of using bonded copper for Ethernet in the last mile,” notes Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks and co-founder of Infonetics Research. “High capacities and reach where fiber in unavailable make it a useful and effective alternative where fiber isn’t justified.”

“We expect operators to spend a cumulative $1.5 billion on EFM bonded copper EADs over the next five years (out of a cumulative $5.8 billion total for all EADs) as they increase the capacity and efficiency of mobile backhaul networks and business connections,” Continues Howard.

10/100M copper and 1G fiber dominate EAD ports today, however, 10G fiber is growing fast, forecast by Infonetics to grow at a 117 per cent CAGR through 2017. Though in slow decline, Ethernet over TDM (EoTDM) bonded circuits will remain a niche market, providing an inexpensive way to combine several E1s or T1s.

If you are thinking of obtaining a new wide area network, consider Ethernet access loops as a cost-effective and scalable access medium.

Filed Under: Network FAQs, Notes About Implementations, Quotation Thoughts, VPLS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Troubleshooting WAN Performance Issues

February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

MRTG-Picture-Large

You have an MPLS or VPLS network and your clients in field offices are complaining.  Your network should be performing better and you can’t figure out what the problem is.  You can contact MPLS-Experts to have their engineers solve your problem, but you want to try to solve the problems yourself.

1. The first thing to check, seems trivial, but you need to confirm that the ports on your router and switch ports are configured for the same speed and duplex. Log into your switches and check the logs for  mismatches of speed or duplex.  Auto-negotiation sometimes does not work properly, so a 10M port connected to a 100M port is mismatched.  Or you might have a half-duplex port connected to a full-duplex port.  Don’t assume that a 10/100/1000 port is auto-negotiating correctly!

2. Is your performance problem consistent?  Does it occur at roughly the same time of day?  Or is it completely random? If you don’t have the monitoring tools to measure this, you are at a big disadvantage in resolving the issues on your own.

3. Do you have Class of Service configured on your WAN?   Do you have DSCP configured on your LAN?  What is the mapping of your DSCP values to CoS?

4. What kind of applications are traversing your WAN?  Are there specific apps that work better than others?

5. Have your reviewed bandwidth utilization on your carrier’s web portal to determine if you are saturating the MPLS port of any locations?  Even brief peaks will be enough to generate complaints.  Large files, such as CAD drawings, can completely saturate a WAN link.

6. Are you backing up or synchronizing data over the WAN?  Have you confirmed 100% that this work is completed before the work day begins.

7. Might your routing be taking multiple paths and not the most direct path?  Look at your routing tables.

8 . Next, you want to see long term trend statistics.  This means monitoring the SNMP streams from all your routers, using tools such as MRTG, NTOP or Cacti.  A two week sampling should provide a very good picture of what is happening on your network.

NTOP allows you to

  • Sort network traffic according to many protocols
  • Show network traffic sorted according to various criteria
  • Display traffic statistics
  • Store on disk persistent traffic statistics in RRD format
  • Identify the identity (e.g. email address) of computer users
  • Passively (i.e. without sending probe packets) identify the host OS
  • Show IP traffic distribution among the various protocols
  • Analyse IP traffic and sort it according to the source/destination
  • Display IP Traffic Subnet matrix (who’s talking to who?)
  • Report IP protocol usage sorted by protocol type
  • Act as a NetFlow/sFlow collector for flows generated by routers (e.g. Cisco and Juniper) or switches (e.g. Foundry Networks)
  • Produce RMON-like network traffic statistic

MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher) provides easy to understand graphs of your network bandwidth utilization.

MRTG Picture

Cacti requires a MySQL database.  It is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool‘s data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices.

Both NTOP and MRTG are freeware applications that will run on the freeware versions of Linux.  As a result, they can be installed on almost any desktop computer that has out-lived its value as a Windows desktop machine.  If you are skilled with Linux and networking, and you have the time, you can install this monitoring system on your own. You will need to get your carrier to provide read-only access to your router SNMP traffic.

But you might find it more cost effective to have the engineers at MPLS-Experts do the work for you.  All you need to do is provide an available machine with a Linux install (Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat, etc) with remote access via a VPN.  Our engineers will then download all the software remotely, install and configure the machine.  When we are done with the monitoring, beside understanding how to solve your problem (and solving it!) you will have your own network monitoring system installed for your use on a daily basis.  We’ll teach you how to use it, which is quite simple using the web based tools, so you can view it from any machine on your network.

If you need assistance in troubleshooting your wide area network, contact MPLS-Experts today!

 

Filed Under: Troubleshooting MPLS Networks Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Ethernet or VPLS for your WAN

June 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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:

  • Analyze costs, performance, latency, reliability, technical support and security.
    • analyze your network performance data and compare it with your test of Ethernet performance data;
    • research vendor and carrier experience; or
    • retain an experienced network consultancy, like MPLS-Experts to provide an analysis.
  • Determine your medium- and longer-term demands for bandwidth, throughput and latency, and analyze them against your current WAN infrastructure. Will the current WAN be sufficient? How easy/difficult/costly will it be to boost WAN performance?
  • How important is it to have an all-Ethernet infrastructure from cost/benefit and performance perspectives versus your current mixed-protocol environment?
  • How important is it for your WAN to link to other organizations, like subsidiaries or supply chain members, and will a difference in network protocols affect your organization’s business operations?
Filed Under: Uncategorized, VPLS Tagged With: , , ,

What are your high bandwidth loop options?

August 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: Carriers Offering MPLS, Industry Surveys, Notes About Implementations Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Is VPLS a better solution than MPLS

June 9, 2008 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Notes About Implementations, Quotation Thoughts, Uncategorized, VPLS Tagged With: , , , ,