15 October 2003 ITU Telecom, Geneva Switzerland Lightwave Europe -- Cisco Systems has announced a new development to its Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology: the adoption of MPLS by more than 200 customers worldwide to offer valuable new services to their business customers.
MPLS deployments delivered in Cisco IOS Software have doubled over the past year and include customers such as Bell Canada, Bellsouth, BT, T-Systems, Infonet Services, O2, and Telecom Italia.
The company also announced the latest addition to its MPLS solutions portfolio, Cisco IOS MPLS Bandwidth-Assured Layer 2 Services that combines Any Transport over MPLS (AToM), traffic engineering, and quality of service (QoS).
Service providers can now connect any transport at Layer 2 over a single IP/MPLS converged infrastructure, representing significant operational and capital cost savings and the ability to offer value-added services such as managed intranets, private voice over IP networks, intranet multimedia, and networked commerce.
This solution also enables incumbent and new entrant service providers to operate applications such as third-generation (3G) wireless networks and voice trunking.
Rob Redford, Cisco's VP Marketing, said, "Our IOS MPLS architecture simplifies the network while delivering leading service flexibility, policy control, and resiliency. We are excited by the accelerating pace of global adoption."
Cisco claims to provide the most-comprehensive suite of MPLS solutions, including traffic engineering, bandwidth services, virtual private network (VPN) services, and migration from Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay.
The IP Solution Center (ISC) network-management application provides customers with network resource planning, deployment, configuration and maintenance features for MPLS-based VPNs and services.
The new Cisco MPLS Bandwidth-Assured Layer 2 Services is a network architecture that provides improved MPLS Layer 2 functions to influence network convergence, increased resiliency with MPLS Fast Reroute for AToM circuits, QoS prioritization using Differentiated Services, and better utilisation of bandwidth with MPLS traffic engineering. Together these technologies emulate the traditional Layer 2 infrastructure and enable these services to migrate to an IP/MPLS network.
"This announcement represents a significant step in enabling MPLS-based carrier infrastructures to deliver leading services to meet customer needs," said Irwin Lazar, Practice Manager, Burton Group.
"This functionality provides a flexible solution enabling service providers to deliver Layer 2 and Layer 3 services capable of providing more reliable quality of service over a single IP/MPLS converged infrastructure."
"Cisco's MPLS enhancements are providing us with improved network efficiencies and added functionality for our IP VPN customers," said Danny McLaughlin, managing director, BT Major Business.
"The MPLS solution is easily integrated into our infrastructure and offers tremendous interoperability that, in the end, provides operational savings to us as a carrier while allowing us to seamlessly deliver new services to customers."
Cisco was first to deliver Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards-based MPLS, beginning with Cisco IOS Software Release 12.0 in 1999, and now offers the industry's most-pervasively deployed feature-rich MPLS architecture.
The Cisco Bandwidth-Assured Layer 2 Services is shipping now in Cisco IOS Software releases 12.0(24)S, 12.0(25)S, and 12.0(26)S. Service providers interested in testing or deploying Cisco MPLS solutions should contact their local sales office.