Frame relay is one of the most widely accepted ways of linking
corporate sites. But the time may now be ripe for MultiProtocol
Label Switching (MPLS), a no-nonsense high-speed routing protocol
promising better quality of service and lower implementation
costs.
MPLS is an Internet Engineering Task Force specification enabling
routers at the edge of networks to read special tags on Internet
protocol packets. That bypasses destination lookup in routers at
the core of the network, which, according to industry officials,
helps speed routing and affords quality of service at levels that
can support a wide variety of network traffic, including video.
A major proponent of MPLS for worldwide wide-area network
connections is Global One. At this week's Networld+Interop
conference, the telecommunications services provider announced it
had just flipped the switch on a new data centre in Virginia, and
said it would aggressively market its virtual private network (VPN)
over an MPLS service to corporate customers throughout North
America.
Andi Wethli, CIO at Switzerland-based abrasives manufacturer Sia
Abrasives Holding AG, said his company had chosen Global One's MPLS
VPN service to connect company sites in ten countries.
Wethli hired a consulting firm to recommend a list of service
providers and then selected the Global One system after "getting
more of the details face-to-face".
His selection criteria included global access to the carrier's
network, VPN services and a single network that could handle voice
and data. Wethli's company runs enterprise resource planning
applications, some legacy production systems, company e-mail and
voice telephone traffic over the network.
Jim Slaby, an analyst at Giga, said he expects to see a "wave of
deployment" for MPLS-based networks during the next two to three
years, because it is cheaper to set up, manage and maintain and can
cost companies 10% less to install and run than frame services, he
said. WorldCom is also going in that direction, Slaby added.
Global One's main service offering is still frame relay, noted
Executive Vice President Detlef Spang. Still, he expects more of
his company's existing corporate customers to migrate to MPLS VPNs.