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: , , , , , , , , , , ,

VPLS Prices Drop Dramatically

November 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Prices in the marketplace are dropping as more carriers offer Ethernet Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS).  But due to limited availability in some regions, VPLS can still be an expensive WAN option to implement.

According to a recent report by research firm TeleGeography, Western Europe and the United States saw the largest price drops for VPLS services year over year.

What helped drive down VPLS costs in Europe were two factors: availability and growing competition. Europe was the first region to deploy carrier Ethernet, meaning that VPLS is now “more widely available in Europe than in any other region.” Throughout Europe there is a growing base of incumbent and competitive players offering VPLS service.

London and Frankfurt saw a strong drop in VPLS service prices. A FastE VPLS port in London was $2,918 per month in H2 2012, while the price of the same service in Frankfurt was $1,752 per month, 39 percent less than what enterprise customers had to pay last year.  So for corporate networks that include Europe and the USA, prices are exceedingly attractive.

In markets like the key cities of South America,  there aren’t as many service options, so VPLS continues to be expensive. The median price for a FastE connection in Sao Paulo was $10,973 in Q2 2012, which is twice what a business customer would pay in New York or Los Angeles, two markets where there are multiple service provider options. Again, the issue with the prices is simply service availability. In New York, VPLS availability was 28 percent versus 6 percent in Sao Paulo.

Besides Latin America, VPLS prices in Asian cities continue to be high. The median price of a FastE VPLS port in Mumbai was $22,111 per month in Q2 2012. Although Mumbai’s VPLS prices dropped 13 percent over 2011, they are still eight times what a customer would pay for the same service in London.

There does appear to be hope with VPLS pricing.

Brianna Boudreau, a TeleGeography analyst, said that as domestic U.S. and international service providers expanded their Ethernet footprints to meet the needs of multinational clients that were moving into areas such as Latin America and India, overall “VPLS service availability increased 9 percent worldwide between 2011 and 2012.”

Boudreau added that as more players “enter the market and the service continues to mature, prices will continue to decline, and regional disparities will narrow.”

VPLS is, of course, not the only service where geography and availability dictate prices. Similar trends have been seen in local access loops and international bandwidth.

Filed Under: Industry Surveys, International Networks, VPLS Tagged With: ,

Why consider VPLS for your WAN

August 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

1) More flexibility and manageability with with VPLS

When it comes to rapid change and advancement, companies which can respond quickly to market shifts will  benefit from VPLS, a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) solution. VPLS uses MAC addresses with Layer 2 switching as opposed to Layer 3 MPLS solutions which use IP addresses and Layer 3 routing.

The main advantage of this is that with VPLS you are in control of your own IP routing. Therefore, your IT department can be much more agile in responding to varying levels of customer demand. VPLS networks allow you to conduct rapid reconfigurations yourselves without having to contact your service provider and wait for the provider to act upon the request. Even if you do require a service provider change, the typical time to make network changes to Layer 2 VPLS networks is only a fraction of that for Layer 3 MPLS networks because the network planning process is much simpler, which could be crucial for some businesses. Another feature which aids agility is the ease of adding new sites. With a VPLS-enabled network, a new site can be added by simply changing the network router that connects the site to the VPLS network. With Layer 3 MPLS solutions, however, it is a much more complex process as all of the service provider’s routers need to be changed which typically takes 10 times as long.

2) More efficiency with VPLS

Companies with a VPLS-enabled wide area networks will be more smooth-running and thus should be able to provide a better level of service to their customers. This is down to the fact that with VPLS the company has access to its own network information so faults in a VPLS network can be isolated much faster and the IT department can trouble-shoot to fix an urgent crisis rather than having to go through a number of support engineers to get the information required from a carrier. Less network down-time means higher corporate efficiency and productivity. Another aspect of our VPLS solutions is that they offer 5 levels of Quality of Service (QoS) and allow you to define your own priority levels either through labeling your traffic or using the service aware QoS feature on the core network. This is how VPLS maximizes efficient network usage according to your business needs, so you can rest assured that mission-critical data such as CRM, ERP and SCM are allocated enough bandwidth, alongside key services such as video conferencing and telephony, even during peak usage and without costly over provisioning of network capacity.

3) Lower costs with VPLS

Companies that use VPLS solutions will find they have lower costs for a number of reasons. Firstly, VPLS enables convergence of services such as VoIP, video etc. so that all traffic can be delivered over a single Ethernet interface, eliminating multiple leased lines and resulting in economies of scale. Secondly, working with VPLS uses the same skills sets that LAN specialists have, so you would not need to provide additional training on WAN skills or hire WAN specialists. In addition, VPLS requires a lower cost CPE as it requires smaller and fewer routers than MPLS solutions.

4) Lower latencies with VPLS

As a switched, Layer 2 solution VPLS is zero-hop in the core of the network, so extremely low round-trip latencies and jitter can be achieved. For example sub 1millisecond within a metropolitan area and 67 milliseconds round-trip from London to New York. This improves the productivity of the workforce as information is available faster. It also saves retail customers using Point-of-Sale systems time dialling up to make credit/debit card payments, improving their customers’ sales experience.

Thanks to Exponential-e

 

 

 

Filed Under: Carriers Offering MPLS, Get MPLS Price Quote, Industry Surveys, International Networks, Network FAQs, Quotation Thoughts, VPLS 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: , , ,

Tata Communications has launched a low latency Global Ethernet network

June 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Submarine cable landing in Asia

Today, Tata Communications has launched a low latency network to connect financial trading capitals in Asia, the US and the UK.

The company claims the development is the industry’s first global low latency network, offering a multipoint Ethernet platform for the financial services sector.

John Hoffman, head of Ethernet product management at the company said it is likely other global companies will make similar developments, offering multipoint solutions, if the network proves successful.

“You may now start to see more purpose-built networks created because it gives financial trading companies an option on which cable they would like to purchase capacity on,” he said. “We recognize that while we have the largest global cable network in the world, there is also a big requirement for the fastest network – and that is the basis behind such investment.”

Hoffman heralded the development as part of a new strategy from Tata, and claims it allows customers to work with a single global supplier instead of multiple country specific point-to-point network providers.

He said he believes this could serve as a better approach to low latency trading because investments often get dated with new and emerging technologies. “It is very difficult in this scenario to make large long-term investments into a single cable, because you are never sure when a faster cable is going to be built,” he said. “We didn’t want to make that single cable investment because that investment is ultimately wasted in the end – we are aiming to provide flexibility and resiliency.”

Tata confirmed to Capacity this was only phase one of its low latency project. The company aims to bring low latency connectivity in its home market India and in South Africa, where it owns a majority share in operator Neotel. This is part of a long-running strategy to tap in to other emerging markets. “We look to get into locations where there is less competition and we have a better chance of winning business,” added Hoffman.

Readers should note that this technology is available to all companies interested in low latency communication.  The key is the utilization of the most direct cable path across the globe.

Filed Under: Carriers Offering MPLS, International Networks, VPLS Tagged With: , ,

International Capacity Price Drop to Affect Global Network Prices

May 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Get MPLS Price Quote, Network FAQs, Quotation Thoughts, Uncategorized, VPLS Tagged With: , ,

What does OC mean? You know…OC-3, OC-12, etc.

April 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This is a very brief post, motivated by a consulting engagement that MPLS-Experts is working on right now. This client is building a global private network to service its offices, using eight or ten collocation facilities as the Points-of-Presence. Each collo will be connected with two diverse 1Gbps Layer-1 point-to-point circuits.

So the question came up, what optical circuit do you need for 1 Gig? Not something your average client uses.

OC is short for Optical Carrier, used to specify the speed of fiber optic networks conforming to the SONET standard.

This list shows the speeds for common OC levels.
OC = Speed
OC-1 = 51.85 Mbps
OC-3 = 155.52 Mbps
OC-12 = 622.08 Mbps
OC-24 = 1.244 Gbps
OC-48 = 2.488 Gbps
OC-192 = 9.952 Gbps
OC-255 = 13.21 Gbps

We’ll need a partial OC-24 to provide 1 Gbps on each circuit.

Filed Under: Get MPLS Price Quote, International Networks, International Private Leased Circuit - IPLC, Network FAQs, Private Lines, Quotation Thoughts Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Networking for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance

November 24, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Effectively solving the problem of corporate Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DR/BC) starts with proper planning and networking. A company that owns only a few servers or a complete datacenter will need a failover location and plan known as the Run Book. The other location can be a collocation facility, another business location, other service providers or some sort of hybrid. The business needs to address key questions such as: “How much data can we afford to lose in the event of a system failure?” The amount of possible data loss, measured by either data or time, will help direct the DR/BC solution. The business then needs to identify the Recovery Point Objective (RPO). The RPO is the acceptable level of data loss measured in time (i.e. 5 minutes or 4 hours). The RPO is married to the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) which is the amount of time it takes to get critical systems back into a functional state.


How does networking assist in the RTO and RPO objectives? Larger companies can take advantage of Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) to extend the datacenter network to another physical location. Unlike its cousin Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), VPLS acts on a lower level of network activity. Users and computers connect to systems by name (a friendly translation of an IP address). MPLS works at the IP level. Geographically dispersed locations connected by MPLS need to have different networks (or IP address ranges). Even if you fail a server over to another location using the latest application technology, you will still need to change the IP address of the server, and you will probably need to change dozens of other attributes in the network modified to bring the system back into an operational state. The failover procedure and plan are compiled and updated in the Run Book.


VPLS’s key advantage is that it works at a lower network level than the IP address; it works at the machine address (MAC address). This makes the IP address transferrable anywhere in the network. So a failover of a system can move geographical locations and still maintain its’ IP address and remain reachable by users and computers alike. VPLS can be expensive, but there are alternatives for companies on a budget and those who do not need the large bandwidth requirements most VPLS providers mandate. Companies with sub-VPLS requirements can use IP tunneling and/or channeling to achieve the same goals. By extending the network across a geographically dispersed location(s) at the machine address level (layer 2), you allow the IP addresses of the servers to move freely. The latest in virtualization technology and storage replication makes an aggressive RTO and RPO very inexpensive.


The Run Book is the instruction and procedure plan on how to handle DR/BC scenarios. Given in previous scenarios of failovers where the IP needs to change of the system, the dependency on the IP address can be far reaching. Not only would the server need to change its IP address, but the name to IP (DNS) relationship, connections to data sources, internal application settings and finally, the end user network path to the server/service– which could include dozens of pieces of network gear, will all need to be updated. These types of systems are set up over days/weeks or months when originally deployed, an emergency change under tight deadline for a single system could be difficult even under perfect preparation. Then assume people get busy and the Run Book doesn’t get updated when changes occur. The Run Book then becomes a massive paperweight and budget nightmare to maintain effectively.


Leveraging a geographically dispersed layer 2 network either by VPLS or IP tunneling/channeling shrinks the DR/BC run book, allows the staff to fix the original problem and frees engineers to solving unforeseen issues. Any failover involving IP address changes is fraught with time consuming issues in order to bring missing critical systems back online. Those industries with heavy compliance requirements are in need of simple solutions to meet regulation standards. The networking base does include an upfront investment for setup and enough bandwidth for failover. Managers must maintain routine checks that enough bandwidth is available for a catastrophic failover event of critical systems. Secondary access points should be considered to the failover location if key users will need to perform their job function from outside your network for a prolonged period of time. Routine testing of failovers should be part of the standard operating procedure (SOP) of the IT/IS department. The network is only one part of the overall picture. With a flexible, geographically dispersed network the ground is fertile for system and application failover tools to work their magic with the least complications to achieve success

Credit: Douglas Lantigua, Principal at MUSA Technology Partners  http://www.musatechnology.com

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

When Carrier Diversity is Useless

September 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I just received a call from a financial trading company based in Singapore. Their business requires the lowest latency since a delay in executing a 100-million dollar trade can cost millions! They have been paying for two carriers, each providing DS-3 connectivity to their sister facility in Tokyo. They were accustomed to 80ms latency. When the APCN cable was cut on August 11, they discovered that their redundant DS-3 ran on the same APCN cable. Performance degraded severely enough to hurt their business.

The lesson: using an MPLS Expert can assure that the network you have suits your requirements for performance and security.  Rarely does the discussion of specific cable infrastructure arise in the procurement process.  But your network performance depends on it!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Networking to India – What Tier is your city?

January 14, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Networking to India can be a challenge for many carriers.  Our experience has resulted in some top tier carriers requiring six weeks to provide quotations for connectivity in India.  This is why we always suggest the best carriers, based on our experience, can respond in a week or so.

The service level agreements that you can expect will vary on whether your facilities are located in the service area of a top tier Point of Presence. Second and third tier cities will not be able to offer the same SLA as a tier-1 city.

To help you put this all in perspective, here are the major Indian cities note note:

Tier 1 Cities: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Ernakulam, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune.

Tier 2 Cities: Bhopal, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Lucknow, Jaipur, Jullundhar, Surat

While there are additional POPs all over India, the ones above are the key industrial and business centers of note.

Filed Under: Carriers Offering MPLS, Get MPLS Price Quote, Quotation Thoughts, VPLS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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