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The biggest nightmare for any CIO or a corporate network manager is to provide secure and reliable communication between various branches of a corporate house and the mobile employees. Traditionally wide area networks have been built on frame relay, ATM, or TDM technology. According to research reports, though dialing in to the VPN remains the primary choice of telecommuters across the world, more people are moving towards broadband access of VPN.

MPLS promises to bring down cost, increase reliability and scalability, which were often missing in legacy networks. Add to this lower latency, easier provisioning, higher security and bandwidth, and MPLS makes an attractive proposition for VPNs.

Managed Services
MPLS VPN reduces the complexity of the network by avoiding individual points at each office unit. The customer needs to provide just the connection of the office router to the edge router at the service provider's end. The MPLS service provider takes care of the interconnections. All this can be classified as Layer 3 service. However, if the customer wants Layer 2 or leased line like services over MPLS, it can also be made available. For service providers like Bharti, end-to-end connectivity and complete managed services have become the selling point.

Attractive security features
MPLS is an IP based packet switch technology where data is converted into packets and labeled for the requisite destination. On reaching the destination, the label is identified and packet delivered. It gives the customers option of selecting their encryption mode - public or private key - or solutions like IPSec etc can also be incorporated on the networks.

Applications on MPLS VPNs
MPLS VPNs support any business grade application. It also provides flexibility of diverting and routing traffic around link failures, and bottlenecks. It can deliver data, voice and video services on the same network over multiple locations. The biggest advantage is that MPLS enables cheaper, better and faster data and video services as easily as it does for intra office voice calls.

Source: Bharti

Multicast applications like video conferencing or multimedia services save time and money for enterprises. Voice over IP, Internet and e-mail services come as bonus on these networks. Being a managed service where enterprises buy SLAs and services, multi locations business like banks and dealer-company networks can easily run ERP and work flow management applications.

MPLS VPNs can be accessed through public Internet too thus freeing it from being location specific. For those on the move, MPLS creates a secure tunnel to the organization's database for critical information, including product catalogue, pricing and marketing material. All this helps in improving the business process and makes transactions easier and faster.

In India, all the major telecom carriers offer MPLS VPN services. Bharti, BSNL, VSNL, and Reliance have some MPLS-based IP VPN with the last mile access over a broad range of access options, including dial-up, DSL, and cables etc. Even MTNL has tied up with BSNL to offer its enterprise customers an all India VPN service. With IP-based networks establishing their credibility in performance and cost, more enterprises would evaluate MPLS VPNs for their communication needs.

Anurag Prasad