And, let's also face that, as Network people, those metrics don't get us very far in proving that. So we like to be able to provide at least some level of metrics to “prove it's not the network”. Most larger corporations sign contracts with these said-Service Providers using Legal Teams competent enough to insert sharp teeth into the contract – so that the SLA's have some teeth. Yes, compared to the Frame-Relay days, MPLS WAN's drove the Big Three providers to decrease WAN costs extensively – especially in the NxT1 arena. And as Network Engineers who have worked on the Analyst side of the isle, we also know that MPLS WAN's are insanely expensive. Private access with guaranteed/SLA'd latency and the ability to work hand-in-hand with the provider to guarantee a committed bandwidth, honor queues end to end, etc etc. More times than not, I find repair/response times better with broadband than MPLS/T1 circuits where in the US where those circuits are usually covered by tariffs defining SLA of response, repairs and credits.Īs Network Engineers, we all know (at least we should all know) that MPLS WAN's provide us mainly with advantages. We have two offices on the same broadband provider who run VoIP between each other on a L2L VPN and sometimes the QoS is an issue as calls can sound as if the call is in an empty, echoing warehouse. ![]() The local carrier has had issues in a specific area causing this problem. We are also using Wyse terminals with a Citrix desktop, this time with Cisco ASA firewalls, but the poor quality of service on broadband can cause the Citrix desktops to disconnect. With my current employer the bandwidth is important due to print jobs, scanned documents and medical images as an MPLS circuit with the bandwidth requirements necessary would be too costly for the org. In my previous employer, print jobs were local and most traffic was from Wyse terminals to a Citrix desktop but TCP connection timeouts could be an issue especially with SonicWALL firewalls which we had to change the settings from 15 minutes to 1 hour. Having worked with all 3 options it all depends on what type of traffic you intend to use. With my current employer we have about 7 remote offices all of which are using VPN on broadband. ![]() In my previous employment we had about 18 remote sites mixed with MPLS, Frame-relay and VPN on broadband. But if you find that your Internet circuits provide sufficient throughput so that congestion of real-time services never becomes a problem, maybe that's an acceptable solution. Should you decide on moving to a VPN overlay, do so in phases: Keep the MPLS WAN around for a few months in case the overlay strategy doesn't work out. A VPN overlaid on top of Internet circuits might work most of the time, but when it doesn't perform adequately, you'll have little immediate recourse. My advice would be to stick with the MPLS WAN if you can afford it. Since private connectivity can be achieved using a VPN overlay on top of plain Internet circuits, can we still justify the cost MPLS WANs? Should we? A dedicated 3 Mbps MPLS circuit might cost three or four times as much as a 50 Mbps business class broadband Internet circuit: These numbers are hard to justify to management who may not appreciate the contexts of reliability and QoS controls. Unfortunately, MPLS WANs tend to be considerably more expensive than Internet circuits. ![]() Most MPLS providers also allow you to choose from a menu of QoS schemes and classify your traffic so that real-time voice and video services are treated higher preference during periods of congestion. MPLS WANs are great because they provide flexible, private connectivity with guaranteed throughput. This is something I struggled with pretty frequently in a prior job working for a managed services provider. What is your take on the MPLS vs Internet debate from a network engineer's point of view? And more so, would running those services over Internet work? and networks feel we need MPLS for guaranteed quality for these services but management feels the Internet is today stable enough to run just as good as MPLS. Our CIO has recently told us that he wants to get rid of MPLS because it is too costly and is leaning towards big internet lines running IPSEC VPNs to connect the whole of Africa.Īs you can imagine, this has caused a huge debate between the networks team and management, we run high priority services such as Lync enterprise, SAP, video conferencing etc. I received an email last week from a reader seeking advice on a fairly common predicament:
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