Royal Caribbean overcame wireless challenges aboard its flagship Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship, using a Cisco MPLS network, Cisco wireless gear and even iPhones.
American firms will have to go north of the border if they want to subscribe to the continent's best MPLS offerings, says a new study by Forrester Research.
One question we’re often asked is “what comes next?” Today we’d like to speculate on what we think comes next after the enterprise-based, IP-VPN that rides an MPLS backbone. We think the answer to this question has everything to do with convergence because until the edge-to-edge access network is converged, network management of more advanced services like VoIP is problematic.
The Internet’s leading standards bodies have agreed to work together to ensure that a new transport protocol being developed for Multiprotocol Label Switching networks is compatible with the billions of dollars worth of MPLS equipment that carriers have installed in recent years.
A couple of years ago we mentioned that one of the toughest tasks at that time was getting trained on new technologies. With slashed training budgets, most companies simply didn’t have the resources to send their staffs to conferences and formal training classes. We can’t see that this situation has gotten any better. As a partial solution to this problem, Webtorials has continued its partnership with MPLScon to make available online what is essentially the entire MPLScon 2006 program.
I sometimes find myself talking about a topic and getting blank stares. Then a year or two later, everyone is suddenly talking about it. One such topic is security virtualization. Until now, those two words were seldom seen together. You would have to live in a cave to have not heard about server virtualization, and storage virtualization also is discussed widely in storage areas. Network virtualization applies to virtual LANs (VLAN) and MPLS, so lots of people discuss that. But security was never brought
Most of my clients are making the move to MPLS. They're either actively considering MPLS-based services, testing them or embarking on a migration. I've learned quite a few lessons:
Although the New York version of the Interop conference didn't draw huge crowds last week, those that made the trek seemed pleased with educational sessions covering everything from network access control to MPLS.
Over the past few weeks we've been discussing a number of topics surrounding queuing, dropped packets, and, to a certain extent, voice. This week we're especially please to have a guest reply to these discussions from our longtime friend and associate, Michael Finneran, president and principal consultant at dBrn Associates.
Let's face it; if the CIO has a recent background in technology, it is almost always in the area of applications. It is very rare to find a CIO whose last job had anything to do with the WAN. In addition, when the CIO talks with the company's senior management, it is mostly about business processes such as supply chain management and the role that key applications play in enhancing those processes. These conversations are never about topics such as MPLS or Gigabit Ethernet.
In a previous newsletter, we discussed the fact that a number of IT organizations were implementing MPLS as a way to save money over their existing frame relay and ATM networks. Today, we will discuss MPLS pricing.
Responding to a recent report on the market prospects of an MPLS alternative for metro Ethernet, edge switch market Hammerhead Systems this week reiterated a soul-baring confession.
NEW YORK -- Granted, it was an MPLS-immersed conference. And Cisco had its best engineering SWAT team there to exterminate anything that threatened its router franchise.
Last time, we continued a discussion of what happens in an MPLS network if defined traffic levels are exceeded so that some packets need to be dropped. In particular, we stated that there is a belief that - to a certain extent - it is better to drop a few voice packets than to deliver it late. The reason behind this phenomenon is that modern packet voice algorithms are designed with the assumption that some packets will be dropped. In fact, the fact that "never is better than late" led to the usage of UDP
In a recent newsletter entitled "Designing MPLS networks with Cisco routers" we discussed how service providers deal with MPLS service classes somewhat differently depending on the equipment vendor they use. In response to that newsletter, we heard from Azhar Sayeed, manager of product marketing at Cisco who wanted to clarify how Cisco equipment is used to implement the queues that correspond to the MPLS service classes.
At the moment, the debate between Layer 2 VPN services based on MPLS and Layer 3 MPLS VPNs is largely theoretical; Layer 2 VPN service are not widely available yet.
AT&T this week completed transitioning its IP traffic to a consolidated IP/MPLS backbone by deploying 40Gbps Ethernet technology over its entire U.S. ultra-long haul network.