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Interview with Nir Daube - VP of Product Management

Q. How is the pubic network changing and what mechanisms do providers need in order to support this evolution? A. Most networks today are best effort. They only provide a few services that require a few levels of priority.  We are seeing a consolidation in the market – carriers are more likely to want to deliver multiple services –wireless backhaul, video services, data services, business VPNs and residential customers - over a single network in order to save on costs and increase efficiency.

Q. What are the challenges in moving MPLS closer to the customer?

A. The operational challenge may be the biggest hurdle to overcome when moving MPLS to the access network.  MPLS is difficult to engineer, and operationally, complex for operators to provision and monitor.  The second challenge is cost.  MPLS equipment is notorious for its high price.

Q.What are the advantages?

A. MPLS is far more scalable than VLANS.  An Ethernet network is limited to 4096 VLANs, and even with QinQ, the limitation is still 4K in service VLANs running above customer VLANs.  MPLS, on the other hand, supports a million labels. Each label is specific to the device location and can have its own priority and specific SLA policy which it maintains across the network. This enables the service provider to offer more services and support more customers on the same infrastructure.

In addition to that the traffic engineering embedded in the MPLS protocols allows a granular control over the services & SLA polices.

Q. How is Telco Systems addressing the challenges?

A. Our approach to MPLS in the access is through VPLS.  VPLS is a Layer 2 VPN which means that the devices to support it are less complex than comparable Layer 3 VPN devices seen in an IP MPLS implementation. 

In a Layer 2 VPN environment, the amount of resources is reduced, thereby lowering the power consumption making it more cost effective.  The idea is to optimize the device to the application and the price.  By consolidating services onto a unified infrastructure you can add new revenue generating services while saving on operational costs by minimizing the number of the personnel operating the network itself and reducing power consumption.  You can also save on CAPEX by investing in only one type of infrastructure, which in our case is Ethernet, which is more cost optimized than other solutions.

We’ve implemented this in our newly released multi-service aggregation switch, the T-Metro 7224.

We also believe that it is important to simplify the engineering and management of the network.  We are addressing that issue with a management solution that will allow the operator to keep the same personnel and operational costs while migrating into an MPLS solution.  Our management system will allow automatic path creation, automatic service creation and will allow the operator to enforce specific QoS policies and enforce SLAs without adding complexity.