March 26, 2002

By Amy Glynn Hornick, News@Cisco

Enterprises and service providers have long recognized the importance of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). With the continued growth in managed corporate network services and the current competition and cost pressures among service providers, Cisco IOS. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology is viewed as a launching pad for compelling service offerings.

With the widespread availability of Cisco's MPLS technology, the deployment, management, scalability and flexibility of VPNs has been greatly simplified and improved. As a result, the use of MPLS to provide VPN services is rapidly increasing. Today more than 100 service providers are using MPLS VPNs in production or in field trials, or have announced the offering of VPN service based on MPLS technology.

Cisco's MPLS technology in Cisco IOS Software makes VPNs easier to deploy by using a technology that combines the intelligence of routing with the performance of switching. MPLS VPNs network allow private communications over a shared (public) network infrastructure, provide increased scalability to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of users, and are flexible enough to accommodate any-to-any traffic patterns to quickly accept new sites. In addition, they provide predictable and reliable performance over different classes of service, allow users to connect over different media, and meet transport and bandwidth requirements of new Intranet applications.

Cisco's MPLS technology allows service providers to optimize network bandwidth by selectively applying classes of service based on MPLS labels. MPLS VPNs easily scale as the number of routes and customers increase, and provide the same level of privacy as switching technologies. Customers can use private IP addresses without translation and privacy and security can be achieved without tunnels or encryption.

MPLS VPNs also enable VPN service providers to support very-large-scale VPN service offerings (thousands to millions of VPNs per service provider) and to support a diverse population of customers. This scenario enables connectivity to a large number of sites for enterprises, Inter-provider VPNs, and carrier of carriers.

In the past year, the number of leading service providers deploying Cisco's MPLS Solutions has tripled from 30 in 2001 to more than 100 in 2002. Customers include Bell Canada, Equant, France Telecom, BT Ignite, Infonet Services, KDDI, Japan Telecom and NTT Communications. Working with Cisco has enabled these service providers to evolve their carrier-class IP network and begin pioneering next-generation Internet capabilities.

Bell Canada

Bell Canada's IP VPN Enterprise service allows customers to consolidate voice, data, and video into one network, conduct e-commerce, and share content with their customers and partners on a secure, flexible, high-speed, scalable, private network over Bell Canada's IP backbone. Customers can choose to outsource some or all of their network services. Connectivity to the IP VPN Enterprise can even be extended internationally.

"The IP VPN Enterprise service takes the flexibility of the Internet, adds to it a class of service capability, and offers businesses a way to improve their organization from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. No other technology comes close to MPLS in enabling the VPN capability that makes these services private, flexible, and secure," says Jeremy Wubs, Bell Canada's IP VPN Enterprise Product Manager.

Infonet

MPLS has also streamlined and enhanced Infonet's IP VPN offerings, paving the way for new network services, greater scalability, privacy and security for corporate VPNs, and enabling service-level agreements that can be precisely monitored. The ability to change class of service and bandwidth features on-demand lets Infonet's customers take advantage of seasonal or short-term traffic fluctuations, such as an e-mail surge in response to a marketing campaign or a streaming video sales presentation. Infonet customers are billed only for what they use.

"Using MPLS, VPNs have become much easier to deploy and scale," says Joe Fusco, Director of Global Intranet Services Marketing at Infonet. "You configure the virtual circuits centrally across the IP network, so it's also a lot easier and cost effective to manage."

As enterprises work to extend mission-critical, Intranet-based applications to their customers, suppliers, and partners, more and more service providers are offering competitive IP-based network solutions to help corporations meet their goals. Cisco's MPLS technology enables service providers to offer their customers secure, scalable and reliable access to corporate intranets at any time and from anywhere. Amy Glynn Hornick is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.