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TMCnews Featured Article
March 10, 2009
Mu Dynamics Focuses on MPLS Data Services
By Tim Gray, TMCnet Web Editor
As long as real-time network services continue to be the lifeblood of nearly every enterprise, operator and network product vendor, next-generation IP-based network services – such as VoIP or IPTV (News - Alert) or any other service which may be based on IMS – will depend on underlying network infrastructures using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS).
And often carriers confronted with unexpected events arising from within these complex multi-vendor standards-based environments are turning to Mu Dynamics for a solution to help “manage the unexpected.”
Mu Dynamics helps address these issues through analysis solutions designed to improve the reliability and uptime of networked products and IP business services, they also proactively address robustness and resiliency factors before systems are deployed in production environments.
Because carriers offer an important class of services built on MPLS-based packet cores, often called "data services", these services facilitate cloud-based corporate enterprise networks using virtual private LAN service or VPLS - securely extending the corporate LAN across the WAN.
MPLS operates just below the IP layer and effectively virtualizes a network's physical layer, offering carriers flexibility in traffic engineering and service provisioning. As a feature in routers, MPLS is now relatively mature since it has been present for over a decade. MPLS has enabled network operators to offer increasingly sophisticated real-time services.
According to Thomas Maufer, Mu Dynamics’ director of Technical Marketing, the transition to IP-based networks is well underway. Backbone operators are using, and have for sometime, MPLS -- which is a whole family of technologies -- to scale their core networks as well as to extend virtual private LAN service (VPLS) to customers.
“MPLS-based networks even allow providers to offer circuit emulation services over packet cores, which is much cheaper than using end-to-end TDM infrastructures to offer circuits to customers,” said Maufer. “Soon, most leading network operators will have a completely packet-switched core network where the links operate at 100 Gbps or higher, and the very concept of a link is blurred by the fact that many links can be optically multiplexed on a single fiber.”
Using MPLS, carriers can offer traditional packet-level interconnections or emulated end-to-end virtual circuit services or virtual private [packet] networks. A packet core such as MPLS is far more cost-efficient, and more functional, than conventional fixed circuits and such services can be offered to customers at lower price points, according to Mu Dynamics.
Because provisioning and operational costs can be key reason carriers are motivated to migrate their networks to packet-based MPLS cores, MPLS may be provisioned to offer equivalent or better redundancy, and in turn, offer higher reliability and availability, than circuits provisioned based on time-division multiplexed networks.
In addition to the technical benefits for carriers, MPLS has business advantages as well, and the platform can offer an increasing array of revenue-generating services while leveraging a common infrastructure, according to Mu Dynamics.
These networks are much more efficient than legacy TDM cores -- both in terms of traffic utilization and also in terms of service offerings delivered using the infrastructure, according to Mu Dynamics.
Those who can benefit include:
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Carriers offer services like Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) sold directly to large financial, government agencies and other end-users. Unexpected network behavior and downtime must be proactively avoided or these customers will leave for the competition causing pricey customer churn for the operator.
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Carrier services similar to end-to-end "circuits" are provisioned across an MPLS core. These pseudo-circuits may be "virtual" in the reality of the carrier, but not in the mind of the customer. Years of buying costly time-domain multiplexed (TDM) circuits based on ultra-reliable telephone switching technology have built a set of expectations in the mind of the customer. They really do expect "five 9s" (99.999%) of uptime...even if the carrier is delivering and selling these emulated "circuits" at a much lower cost. Unplanned network or service weaknesses or downtime still causes customer churn.
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Finally, the most important "customer" of the MPLS core is the operating entities of network operators basing their NGN and other real-time services on this core. Any outage or disruption in the core causes widespread disruption to the network operator's business operations.
Because it is so important that MPLS-based networks – on which virtually all of a carrier's services implicitly or explicitly increasingly depend – be robust, testing is imperative.
And much depends on the proper operation of a carrier's underlying MPLS infrastructure MPLS is clearly fundamental to modern packet-based network services. But MPLS' flexibility is derived from a high degree of complexity:
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Set up and tear down label-switched paths
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Detect and manage neighbor relationships among label-switching routers
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Set up traffic handling rules (QoS, clocking, etc.)
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Manage flows of data, especially considering committed/contracted performance
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Manage all the interactions between label-switching routers (failover, protection switching, discovery, etc.)
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Interactions with routing protocols
Mu Dynamic’s Denial of Service (DoS) Module for the Mu-4000 appliance is designed to ensure service providers can proactively identify and eliminate many of service, application and network downtime caused by DoS and Distributed DoS attacks.
As networks have become more essential to the operation of businesses worldwide they are becoming more complex. This increased functionality drives complexity and makes it harder to manage, less robust or resilient, and contain an increasing number of security vulnerabilities.
And while companies like Mu Dynamics help address these issues through analysis solutions designed to improve the reliability and uptime of networked products and IP business services, they are also proactively addressing robustness and resiliency factors before systems are deployed in production environments.
As TMCnet recently reported, Mu Dynamics is taking its solutions on the raod as part of its bid to help network operators and their vendors eliminate downtime through proactive service assurance.
Tim Gray is a Web Editor for TMCnet, covering news in the IP communications, call center and customer relationship management industries. To read more of Tim’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Tim Gray
