Can MPLS live outside VPN?

Bonsoir,

Do you think that MPLS can exist without VPN, or do you think that MPLS is always in relationship with VPN?

Thanks, best regards, Michelot

Reply to
Michelot
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Reply to
Thrill5

VRF lite means that you can partition a box into 2 or more logical routers - and there is no linkage to using MPLS.

lots of good reasons to do that, starting with security or management separation.

Reply to
Stephen

MPLS s a technology that almost died. The initial point of MPLS or tag switching was to speed the packet forwarding process - use a label rather than looking deeper into the packet. That almost died when L3 switching came along and beat the performance benefit of MPLS, Then the use of MPLS to create VPNs took off and that's the main point now.

Reply to
Paul Matthews

Bonsoir,

Thanks for your good ideas. I also made progress in this point and stuck all the pieces together!

You're right, and I would prefer the definition of ITU-T (and not this of Wikipedia, the popular vision).

In the VPN we have the client service (client level 1 to 3) and the transport of this service in the provider network (server level 1 to

3, often independant of the client level).

I agree with you. For the server level of the client service we can have e.g. VLAN provider, IP provider, ATM provider, and even directly TDM, not only MPLS.

The VPN intelligence is in the PE (provider edges) face to the CE (customer edges) and not in the P nodes, the nodes between the PE. These nodes can be LSR, IP router, ATM switch, ADM, OADM...

The server level of the VPN client service can be MPLS or other thing.

Your comment is to know if the MPLS transport will go on or not. Today MPLS is changing with the ITU-T works, in T-MPLS, with OAM added. Anyway, the initial MPLS is generally used as a typical L2 switching by providers, just above the TDM connections. And the issue is to take e.g. the TDM alarms back up to the upper levels.

Best regards, Michelot

Reply to
Michelot

Bonsoir,

I forgot the main point.

MPLS, as we talk above, is a provider transport layer. It can transport any traffic: the public client traffic or the VPN client traffic. The client can come from a private individual, an entreprise or an other provider.

Thanks, Michelot

Reply to
Michelot

Whether T-MPLS will be relevant to the providers using MPLS today remains to be seen.

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, snipped-for-privacy@nethelp.no

Reply to
Steinar Haug

this is true, but may be irrelevent. Comms is littered with standards that never got wide use in practice.

i prefer the IETF "standard" touchstone - interoperable implementations and running code.... at least that way you know someone was willing to put real money into using it.

FWIW MPLS doesnt need TDM - and many new networks are being put together to minimise complexity and cost by avoiding using SDH and equivalent mux layers.

This is happening at work some of the time - the key for an existing conventional telco is being able to use SDH where sensible, but having to use it elsewhere.

however - being able to avoid using SDH some of the time is not the same as ripping out the huge installed base of muxes and scrapping them - esp as TDM is pretty good for many non packet based network requirements.

Same thing happens at the optical layer - if fibres cores are plentiful and signals dont need to go more than 40 to 100 Km, then DWDM is a lot of cost for no big gain in many applications.

AFAICT MPLS is the default backbone choice right now for packet layer based networks.

Reply to
Stephen

Bonsoir Stephen,

Recall that MPLS has no physical layer, so you need to have one. And there are only 2 type of solutions.

This is wrong, TDM networks are used to carry packets, supporting connectionless-oriented mode and connection-oriented mode packet switching.

Just to transport Terabit/s with spans of 200 km, through discreetly optical amplifiers... And don't forget that the world is covered by

70% of water.

See my replies above.

Best regards, Michelot

Reply to
Michelot

you need a physical layer, but TDM / SDH is a way to slice it up.

and there plenty more than 2 - fibre, co-ax, microwave and line of sight laser in decreasing reliability :)

at work they might carry just about anything, and only some of the uses include packets. You may be thinking of packet over Sonet / SDH, but the big advantage of TDM is just about any stream of bits will go down the pipe.

examples include ISDN PRI, HDLC "stuff" between routers, F/relay, and more wierd bit level protocols (last example was a stereo audio codec).

Reply to
Stephen

Bonsoir Stephen,

And, for the second type, you can add the 802.3 PHY Ethernet layers.

These are not physical layers, but medium.

Life is not so simple!

Best regards, Michelot

Reply to
Michelot

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