\\ 8el DataSuite™ \ 8el WANPort \ MPLS Core
MPLS Core
8el’s core network has been designed for high-speed switching, crucial for the fast transferral of voice, video and data. MPLS technology has been deployed to provide benefits and enhancements to the already established existing core network.
8el has extensive experience in building robust, private networks that support many leading UK businesses. Each of 8el's WAN network solutions is designed to be resilient, secure and closely tailored to cater for immediate and future customer requirements.
- High Availability - MPLS High Availability provides Stateful Switch Over (SSO) and Non Stop Forwarding (NSF) technology to the MPLS Label Distribution Protocol (LDP). These features have the ability to continue forwarding data following a route processor switchover on the core routers.
- Low latency - Round trip delay across the MPLS Core is sub 1 millisecond ensuring the high speed switching requirement of the core is maintained. MPLS reduces latency by performing a label lookup at each router hop against traditional routing table lookups performed by Layer 3 routers.
- End to end Quality of Service (QoS) - MPLS technology supports the IETF DiffServ architecture. Packets are marked as close to the source as possible and mapped into the EXP field of the MPLS packet. The markings are acted upon throughout the MPLS core ensuring levels of service are provided to different network traffic.
- Redundancy- The MPLS core spans across the 8el data centres providing multiple routing paths over physically separated hardware and links. Whilst older technologies require a permanent path to be configured between two end points, MPLS enables routing decisions to be made on a hop by hop basis, dynamically reacting to changes in network topology.
- Reliable and scalable - 8el’s core network is built across a multi vendor platform designed with N+1 redundancy. Each of 8el’s data centres is connected by multiple, diversely routed dark fibres, connected with CWDM technology. Multiple Gigabit links ensure un-contended connectivity across the core is maintained. Upgrade to 10Gb links is part of the scalability built into the core design to support future growth and ensure that the un-contended access is preserved. The data centres are fully managed and serviced buildings with on site engineers available 24/7.
- Increased performance – 8el’s network has been simplified to a two-level hierarchy. The edge routers exchange routing updates with the customer edge routers, communicating those customer routes to other edge routers using BGP, and exchange internal routes with the core routers. When encountering IP traffic, they perform traditional routing table lookups and either impose or strip off the MPLS labels. The core routersexchange internal routes with other core and edge routers. For traffic forwarding, they use pure MPLS label lookup.
- Full mesh architecture – In a traditional ATM network, to achieve a full mesh between all sites of a customer, 8el would need to configure each and every router with the virtual circuit. To reduce cost and the processing power of CPE typical design saw a partial mesh or hub and spoke more typically deployed. With MPLS a full mesh is created by default providing optimal site to site routing and a removal of single points of failure.
- Support for legacy technologies – 8el’s MPLS Core has absorbed the ATM network allowing for a simple migration for customers using the ATM technology.
- Integration into 8el’s product suite – WebPort, CallPort and SIPPort, have all been absorbed into the MPLS core, providing access to all of 8el’s services and solutions - including monitoring and support.
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