HR Presents New MPLS-TP White Paper

11:00 AM -- In mid June, Heavy Reading hosted a webinar on the emerging MPLS-Transport Profile technology and it had one of the highest numbers of audience registrants in the history of Light Reading webinars. We had registrations from more than 90 countries, including large numbers from the United States, Canada, India, the U.K., Germany, Brazil, Italy, Israel and Mexico, as well as significant numbers from multiple other countries.

Given what appears to be widespread interest in the topic, I am pleased to announce that Heavy Reading has just released a new white paper, "MPLS-TP in Next-Generation Transport Networks," that can be downloaded from Light Reading's MPLS-TP Briefing Center. You can also find other material on the briefing site from network solutions companies that participated in the webinar and shared their perspectives on MPLS-TP in the paper. The companies include Cisco, ECI, Ericsson, Ixia and Metaswitch. Experts from these suppliers have been at the forefront in working with operators like Verizon, BT, AT&T, Comcast, NTT, Bharti Airtel and others to develop and deploy a transport profile for MPLS that allows the technology to be operated in a similar manner to existing transport technologies and gives it the capability to support packet transport services with a degree of predictability that is similar to that found in existing Sonet/SDH networks.

After much effort and debate among members of the IETF and ITU-T, key MPLS-TP standard pillars are largely complete, and the MPLS-TP ecosystem is beginning to take shape. Multiple vendors are in the process of testing, trialing and beginning early service provider deployments of MPLS-TP solutions that make use of new MPLS-based operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) tools. Sophisticated test and measurement solutions designed to demonstrate that MPLS-TP is a viable and compelling technology are now available and have been used in public interoperability tests and demonstrations.

While a few hurdles remain to be overcome, we can say with increasing confidence that the era of standardized MPLS-TP technology is beginning to emerge and is poised to affect the way converged networks are built in coming years.

If you are a service provider, now is the time to get your team up to speed on MPLS-TP. If you are a financial analyst or investor, you will want to start paying closer attention to the trial and deployment activity because the ability of network solutions providers to support standards-based MPLS-TP technology on packet optical transport systems, Carrier Ethernet switch/routers and other equipment could begin to shape carrier purchasing decisions in coming quarters.

Heavy Reading plans to track MPLS-TP developments closely and canvass operators opinions on the emerging technology in the coming months. Among other things, I will be joining representatives from Cisco, ECI and Juniper on an MPLS-TP session at Light Reading’s Ethernet Expo Americas, which will be held in New York City during Nov. 8 and 9.

— Stan "EtherMan" Hubbard, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading