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Seamless MPLS — Nokia 7750 and Juniper MX on GNS3
Introduction
Since 2000, carriers all over the world have been unifying their multi-silos Wide Area Networks (WAN) comprising ATM, TDM, Frame Relay, and IP etc… into a single QoS-ready MPLS WAN network to take advantages of the advance in silicone technology and the industrial standard protocols. The new MPLS WANs support different traffic types such as data, voice and video with QoS Service Level Agreements (SLAs), traffic engineering to maximize WAN network utilization, and less than 50ms network failure restoration.
The initial MPLS network design focuses on WAN with Provider Edges (PEs) as the MPLS service originating and terminating points. Attachment Circuits such as IP, TDM etc… from the Access networks terminate onto the PEs for WAN access. Some examples of the Access networks are Gigabit Ethernet metros, enterprises’ VPLS and VPRN VPN services, carrier’s wireless cell tower backhauling and residential tripe-play broadband network etc…. A typical Tier 1/2 carrier offering coast-to-coast MPLS network services for its customers can have 10s Provider (P) routers in the Core network and 1,000s PE routers in cities or metro to aggregate various wireless and wireline access traffic to the P routers in the MPLS Core network.
