[44246] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: MPLS in metro access networks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Quibell, Marc)
Thu Nov 15 11:20:05 2001
Message-ID: <EF4A9841BCC9D5119E28009027923DF01370E9@yosemite.icn.state.ia.us>
From: "Quibell, Marc" <mquibell@icn.state.ia.us>
To: 'srihari varada' <varada@txc.com>, nanog@merit.edu
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:19:30 -0600
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I would think faster switching/routing and less processing would be wanted
in any mid-to-large sized network...I'm not sure what load balancing and
fault restoration has to do with MPLS....
Marc
-----Original Message-----
From: srihari varada [mailto:varada@txc.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 10:12 AM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: MPLS in metro access networks
Hello:
I have heard some stressing the role of MPLS in metro access networks.
It is difficult for me to visualize the need for it in them while it
is not so difficult to understand the utility (load balancing and fault
restoration etc.) of it in the metro backbone networks.
To characterize metro access networks in the context, the following is
provided:
-- aggregates traffic from residential (arriving via broadband access
links such as xDSL, Cable) and business consumers (arriving via
broadband access links such as
xDSL and high speed links such as Ethernet or SONET)
-- funnels aggregated traffic to metro backbone networks for destination
hosts in the local metro region or remote regions across the
internet regional
and backbone networks. Majority of such access networks are SONET/ATM
based (I didn't come
across any case of Gig Ethernet. However, I do not preculde it).
Thus, there are two questions:
-- Are there known RBOCs/ILECs and CLECs entrenching MPLS in the said
network scope? (I do not see many major ILECs in the un-official MPLS
service
providers list being circulated but it may mean little)
-- If so, what motivates them to do so? Any analysis of the driving
forces is appreciated.
Regards,
Srihari Varada
