VPLS Expected to Spread to Larger Carriers

New MPLS Service Bridges LANs

“The first commercial VPLS services were offered last year, and I’m talking about single figures in terms of number of providers,” says Lindsay Newell, director of product marketing for IP products at Alcatel. “Last year, it was really just competitive providers. Now we’re seeing large service providers testing VPLS and looking to roll out trials.”

VPLS is based on an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft called Lasserre-V. Kompella, written by Marc Lasserre of Riverstone Networks Inc. and Vach Kompella of TiMetra Networks, now owned by Alcatel. VPLS is expected to be a fully ratified standard by the end of this year, but several service providers are already deploying the service because they feel it’s stable enough for commercial use, says Newell.

A class of VPN that allows the connection of multiple sites in a single bridged domain over a provider-managed IP/MPLS network, VPLS makes all customer sites appear to be on the same LAN, regardless of their locations. Unlike IP VPN, where the customer hand-off can be Ethernet, frame relay, IP over TDM or whatever, the customer hand-off to the WAN with VPLS is always Ethernet.

With VPLS, customers maintain complete control over their routing, and since all customer routers in VPLS architectures are part of the same LAN, the result is a simplified IP addressing plan, especially when compared to a mesh constructed from separate point-to-point connections.

Alcatel’s Newell says there are multiple reasons enterprise customers might opt for VPLS over other services. A business might use VPLS because its network doesn’t only use IP, he says, noting that some businesses still use AppleTalk and IPX protocols. IP VPNs are IP-based and don’t support such protocols, he adds.

Some business customers might also choose VPLS over an IP VPN because of security, he says. “In an IP VPN, the service provider shares IP addressing and routing information with a customer,” Newell says. “But there are some customers that don’t want to share their IP addresses with the service provider, they feel it opens up security problems.”

For the service provider, VPLS is simpler to manage because it doesn’t require the management of IP addressing for the customer, Newell says. For that reason, he adds, VPLS will probably be lower in price than IP VPNs. But Newell says that VPLS and IP VPNs should be seen as different rather than competing offerings. “We’re generally seeing providers wanting to offer both — and they can offer both on a single edge router,” Newell says.

Current Alcatel VPLS customers include Allstream and Masergy. Canada’s Allstream will use VPLS as part of its Ethernet service. Masergy, which was the first VPLS service provider, already sells commercial VPLS services in Europe and the United States.

Meanwhile, Riverstone’s announced VPLS customers are SureWest, a regional operator in greater Sacramento; Completel, an alternative provider in France; and MetroNet, a carriers’ carrier in Mexico.

Tellabs recently added VPLS support to its 8800 multiservice routers, which also support network-based IP VPNs and IP quality of service. “We’re in trials all over the world with VPLS,” says Robert Balsamo, group marketing manager for the Advanced Data Products Group at Tellabs.

VPLS is for customers than want reliable, highspeed connectivity, he says, noting that VPLS go to 10gbps and service providers can parse out bandwidth on it in any denomination without changing the interfaces or equipment.

“VPLS is the next general of Layer 2 services,” Balsamo continues. “It enables [service providers] to offer these services on a platform that can also support other services.

“We say build once, sell many. You build the network once,” he says.

“It’s not just about VPLS,” he adds. “[Service providers] are also very interested in IP VPNs, because a lot of customers don’t want to do all that themselves. So both of them are very important. We’re showing they can do it off the same product.”

In addition to selling VPLS to business customers, some cable operators are using VPLS for the dual purposes of offering broadcast video services and expanding into business services, says Newell. “We have one cableco live in Europe with several hundred thousand residential customers on VPLS already, and they’re getting into the business market shortly,” says Newell, who declined to name the service provider. “They built VPLS over their cable infrastructure. Cablecos in the U.S. also are looking at VPLS.”

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