To make things even more interesting... While discussing this with a few different vendors I decided that this particular solution is smoke-and-mirrors, at least in our area. We'd have to buy new point-to-point circuits that all point to a _single_ POP.
MPLS isn't even needed in this case because every location would be hitting the same POP! Unless, of course, they have a whole bunch of routers at the POP but then we're really using MPLS to get from one side of the room to the other. We'd be better off simply buying a couple of frame DS3 circuits for our hub and repointing all the branch PVCs to those circuits. Cheaper and we accomplish the same thing without using another vendor and without buying a whole bunch of new circuits. In fact, one vendor that I asked about this proposed this very solution, except he was suggesting we use their facilities. They offered to set up a couple of routers exclusively for our company to connect to. Again, we don't really accomplish much with that solution since we can do that at our own facility if we want to. John ---- On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, Kent Yu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > John, > > I think you brought an interesting topic. > > With all these pitches about Layer 3 VPN, the question has been > bothering me > for a while, how many enterprises out there really need to have an > any-to-any solution? Less than 0.5% is my guess. Most of the enterprise > client/server applications fit into the hub-spoke topology pretty well, > really have no reasons to get direct connections among their branches. > > > > Theoretically, MPLS should give the service providers the ability to > provide > more scalable and cheaper fully meshed VPN solution, as the SPs do not > have > to manage those hundreds of thousands PVCs, ect. From the enterprises' > perspective, if this gives them a reliable and affordable alternative to > the > traditional hub-spoke frame relay network, it sounds attractive, but > seems > to me all the current implementations are even more expensive, not to > mention their reliability probably is no where near the legacy frame > network, at least not for a while. > > > > The vendors want to sell their MPLS VPN solutions to SPs, the SPs who > built > the network want to sell it enterprises , but my guess is that 99% > enterprises will not buy it, not till... > > > > My .02 > > Kent > > ""John Neiberger"" wrote in message > [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > > Okay, I'm about to show how clueless I am when it comes to MPLS.... > > > > I've been getting calls from multiple providers lately all trying to > > suggest that I migrate our 100-site frame relay network to their MPLS > > network, suggesting that we'll have any-to-any connectivity and the > > ability to prioritize traffic classes within the MPLS network. > > > > Are any of you doing something like this? I'm going to read up on it > > but I'm having trouble visualizing it. Does this basically turn our > > network into a giant multipoint network? Do our branch routers need > to > > be aware of MPLS or do providers make this transparent somehow? How > > does this affect routing? > > > > It seems that if we have any-to-any connectivity then the branch > > routers don't even need to run a routing protocol; every router would > > have one exit point to get to any destination. But, how would the > MPLS > > cloud know where to route packets? The more I think about it it seems > > like our branch routers would have to participate in MPLS to provide > the > > necessary destination info for the MPLS cloud. > > > > See how clueless I am? Ugh... Time to do some studying on this. > > Since we already do a little video conferencing over IP and are > working > > on getting VoIP working, it might be beneficial to get away from the > > frame relay network. But since I don't understand this new > technology, > > I don't know if it's a viable solution for us or not. > > > > Off to CCO I go! > > > > Thanks, > > John [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=37745&t=36670 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
