On a related subject that Howard brought up regarding GMPLS what does
everyone think of Cisco's decision to dump the 15900 Wavelength Router? It
was slated to be one of the first commercial Multi Protocol Lambda Switching
boxes using SRP however, on April 4th it suddenly dissappeared from Cisco's
web site. They've stated that due to the economy it was not profitable to
continue development of that product and that Cisco would instead pursue
more immediate demands such as metro DWDM.
In my opinion removing yourself from the Lambda Switching market is not a
wise direction for the future. The idea of unifying the intelligence and
services of todays layer 3 (and up) boxes with the speed and redundancy of
next-generation optical platforms is extremely profitable in the near
future. This should be where the market leaders in networking spend most of
their R&D on. I've heard Lucent and Nortel (among many others) are very
active in developing intelligent optical switching.
Any other opinions?
-Michael Cohen
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
David Chandler
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 10:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Does MPLS really live up to all its hype? [7:6151]
of those functions already has an established (and often better)
solution. Would any vendor be recommending MPLS if it did not require
an upgrade? $$$$$
I vote: Floor Wax.... :->
PS: Where can I find the article?
DaveC
Irwin Lazar wrote:
>
> A collegue of mine wrote an article some time back entitled "MPLS: Desert
> Toping or Floor Wax"
>
> MPLS originally was created to solve the problem of slow, software-based
> routers. Hardware-based (aka Layer 3 switches) routers alleviated that
> requirement. Since then MPLS is being used for all sorts of different
> functions including:
>
> - traffic engineering
> - IP-based virtual private networks
> - L2 encapsulation within L3 networks
> - Reservation of L1/2 resources by L3-based control mechanisms
>
> IMHO, the basic goal of MPLS is to converge the various L1/2-specific
> control mechanisms into a single, unified control plane capable of
> provisioning and managing a path across a packet-based network
> infrastructure. But who knows where we will be in five years.
>
> Irwin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Chandler [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 8:07 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Does MPLS really live up to all its hype? [7:6151]
>
> No Way!!!
>
> The Marketing people NEVER exagerate..... :->
>
> MPLS does seem like a solution to a problem that was fixed some time
> ago...ie: fast-switching, CEF etc...
>
> DaveC
>
> NRF wrote:
> >
> > Mr. Berkowitz, please read this post and respond.
> >
> > Okay, I am going to run the risk of starting a religious war here. But
I
> do
> > have to ask, is MPLS really as great as people say?
> >
> > I know many people, on newsgroups and in real-life, champion MPLS as the
> > perfect answer to the problems of the core Internet. Faster IP
> forwarding,
> > traffic engineering, VPN capabilities, etc., it seems to have some
> powerful
> > features. No doubt, this attitude is sparked by Juniper, which is
using
> > MPLS as a strategic weapon against Cisco, and since Juniper keeps eating
> > Cisco's lunch, it stands to reason that MPLS has something to do with
it.
> > In fact, many network engineers treat MPLS as nothing less than the holy
> > grail.
> >
> > But I wonder if the hype has begun to outstrip reality.
> >
> > For example, as a response to the LightReading test, Bill St. Arnaud of
> the
> > Canadian carrier Canarie states "The MPLS [multiprotocol label
switching]
> > throughput results confirmed our suspicions that MPLS does not buy you
> much
> > except a big management headache. True, the throughput is higher, but
not
> > significantly higher than IP forwarding"
> > http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=testing&doc_id=3909
> >
> > And even the idea of higher throughput has been questioned by the mother
> of
> > all networking, Radia Perlman:
> > " Originally [MPLS] was designed to make it possible to build fast
> routers,
> > but then, using techniques such as [trie searches, parallelism, K-ary
> > searches] people built routers fast enough on native IP packets. So now
> > MPLS is thought to be mostly a technique for classifying the type of
> packet
> > for quality of service or for assigning routes for traffic
engineering..."
> > (Interconnections, 2nd Ed., p. 347-348). And I think we would all agree
> > that anything Ms. Perlman says must be given serious weight.
> >
> > So I must ask, does MPLS really live up to all the hype? Is it really
the
> > greatest thing since sliced bread? How much of MPLS really is an
> > improvement on today's network, and how much of it is just a bunch of
> > (probably Juniper) marketing bullshi*? Has any company ever worked for
a
> > company that evaluated MPLS and then decided not to use it, and if so,
> what
> > were the reasons?
> >
> > Thanx for all the non-flame responses
> > FAQ, list archives, and subscription info:
> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html
> > Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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