I did a lot of work on MPLS and the enterprises last year while I was at Cisco and got some different conclusions: Enterprises are not really turned on by full mesh almost all of their stuff is hub and spoke, even the VOIP. QOS was not a big thing and it wasn't clear that MPLS added anything hear for the enterprise users, they do not see any Traffic Engineering services nor is it offered. As far as management again to them they do not see any MPLS and have no view into the provider's network nor have they ever so this was not a big issue for them. Most of them were being offered MPLS by their providers but the benefits seemed to be price only. Paul Gilbert Router Management Solutions, Inc. www.routermanagement.com work: 5167666068 mobile: 5164564983 -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Fergie (Paul Ferguson) Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 12:02 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Fwd: Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use Interesting migration, albeit good sense in many regards. FYI, - ferg ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND JOANIE WEXLER ON WIDE AREA NETWORKING 07/22/04 Today's focus: Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use [snip] Today's focus: Enterprises indicate plans for MPLS VPN use By Steve Taylor and Joanie Wexler Early results of a Webtorials survey about WAN service usage plans conducted in May 2004 and sponsored by Network Physics turned up some interesting results. In particular, there is a strong indicator that enterprises are planning fairly broad adoption of MPLS-based VPN services in the next 18 months. Some of that growth in MPLS VPN adoption will be at the expense of traditional frame-relay network services. This is not because of dissatisfaction with those services but rather it is the nature of the applications to be supported that seems to be changing. Enhanced quality of service (QoS) guarantees, especially for converged networking applications such as VoIP, plus a greater degree of meshed networking to support such applications, were shown to be particularly strong drivers, for example. Businesses generally don't just build new networks simply because they're impressed by the idea of QoS or meshed topologies. They build networks to support the needs of the applications they run. Clearly, these "network layer" considerations point to the rapid adoption of converged networking on a widespread basis. But widespread adoption isn't necessarily a good idea unless the newly adopted networking capabilities are manageable. Difficulty with managing MPLS ranks among four of the top six obstacles to MPLS adoption at the current time. However, the Webtorials survey results showed that management of the newly deployed MPLS-based VPN is expected to be at least as good as - and hopefully better than - current capabilities for legacy networks. Technically speaking, this is a reasonable expectation, so one may be quite hopeful that the deployed capabilities will indeed take advantage of the enhanced technology. RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS 2004 MPLS-Based IP VPNs Survey Results Abstract http://www.webtorials.com/abstracts/MPLSSurvey2004.htm MPLS snowballing, alliance says The Edge, 06/02/03 http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2003/0602mplsall.html MPLS adds lift to Boeing net Network World, 06/07/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0607boeing.html Group tackles interoperability to give MPLS needed boost Network World, 07/19/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/071904forums.html -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net