How MPLS is critical to the success of Cloud Computing
One challenge with Cloud Computing is dependency on an internet whose performance can vary from hour to hour. MPLS and Ethernet carrier networks can provide truly dependable quality of service. Service providers will provide a crucial role in the success or failure of Cloud computing. In order for Cloud computing to reach its full potential, Service providers […]
Can an IPSec VPN back-up my MPLS network?
So you want to use an IPSec VPN to backup your MPLS network. It can be done, with the right engineering. In the simplest terms: Use BGP between your network and your MPLS provider Run GRE tunnels between locations over the Internet VPN, with BGP routing across the tunnels. Set these tunnels to be a higher cost […]
Policy Based Routing – MPLS and IPSec Network Optimization
When your company needs global MPLS network access, you are often faced with the cost/benefit paradigm: how big should each port be versus what you can afford. There are certain applications that clearly benefit from using an MPLS network over great distances: SAP, Oracle, VoIP, Video, Citrix. Then there are applications that really would do just fine […]
Cloud Computing and Denial of Service Attacks
We received a call the other day from the CTO of a collocation company that was in the midst of a Denial of Service attack on his network. While I have read articles about this subject, this was the first time that I had ever spoken to a CTO who was living through the nightmare. […]
Sometime MPLS just doesn’t make financial sense
We just completed a consulting engagement with a large hospital group with sixty locations located around a city core. Their frame relay network agreement was expiring and the carrier was interested in having them migrate to an MPLS network. As it turns out, being a large hospital entitled them to special discounts on their frame relay network, […]
WAN Accelerators and MPLS – Important Facts
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 […]
Network Backbones – A question of security
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 […]
When you think you need MPLS but perhaps do not
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 […]
I need a 100ms connection from Boston to China!
This morning, we received a call from a company that does software development in China, with their base of operations in the Boston area. Today, they use a VPN over the internet and the performance is poor. “We need latency of less than 100ms” I was told. I explained that the distance is so great, that […]
UK Finance Company switches to MPLS global VPN network
Not too long ago, a communications solutions provider has revealed that it has migrated a UK finance company onto a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) IP-VPN across its Wide Area Network (WAN). The Funding Corporation, a finance and loan provider, has given the order to migrate its existing voice and Internet services to a MPLS network […]
