-----Original Message----- From: Daniel Golding [mailto:dan@netrail.net]

The scary thing is that the "speed" of MPLS-based networks is taken as gospel by an alarming number of engineers, mainly those who have come out of the large telco's (i.e. ILECs), and are still kind of mad that ATM didn't work out. These folks are more or less alarmed by IP, and desperately seek a more deterministic, switch-based model of data transmission for the Internet as a whole. The fact that there is no practical, real-world difference in forwarding speed between straight IP, and IP over MPLS is generally explained away by these guys in a fairly elaborate handwaving exercise. At least one major hardware vendor is not helping this, with some of their engineers convincing major customers that conventional IP routing is bad, and that anything MPLS is good. While I agree that MPLS has it's uses - i.e. TE as an exception handling mechanism for outages, and L2VPN technology as a FR/ATM replacement, some folks need to approach the technology with additional caution, and not blindly embrace it as a panacea. As the internet engineering community evolves, learning from things like ATM, becomes quite important.

- Daniel Golding

I completely agree with this type of pragmatism. A couple of years ago, MPLS had only one viable application-TE for core IP networks. The implementations were buggy at first, but they have certainly improved. Nobody was *forced* to use it, but some service providers saw advantages to deploying it. Today, MPLS has more applications, such as routing optical lightpaths, L3 VPNs, L2 VPNs, and more applications will come. Again, nobody is *forced* to use any of them. Some of these applications may provide significant business advantage, some of them may crash the network. IMHO, it is a Good Thing(TM) that vendors are coming up with these new applications, because it gives service providers multiple choices in terms of the types of service they could offer, assuming they were willing to take the risk in deploying these services. If you don't NEED protocol X, where X=[RFC 2547, QoS, L2VPNs, GMPLS, pick your favorite proposal here], don't use it. If you don't LIKE protocol X it, don't use it, and hope that: A.) Your competitors deploy it, and B.) Your hunch was right and you make more money than your competitors as the result of your decision. Ultimately, we should let the market decide. Prabhu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Prabhu Kavi Phone: 1-978-264-4900 x125 Director, Adv. Prod. Planning Fax: 1-978-264-0671 Tenor Networks Email: prabhu_kavi@tenornetworks.com 100 Nagog Park WWW: www.tenornetworks.com Acton, MA 01720