RAD Pitches Against MPLS-TP

PARIS -- Dr. Yaakov Stein, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at RAD Data Communications, will speak at the MPLS and Ethernet World Congress 2012 on February 9 in Paris on the topic “Ethernet vs. MPLS-TP in Access Networks.”

In his address, Dr. Stein will conclude that Ethernet retains a strong advantage over MPLS-TP in the access. In order to reach this conclusion, he considers ten factors: fault management functionality, performance management functionality, automatic protection switching mechanisms, Quality of Service mechanisms, handling diverse traffic types, timing distribution, integration with surrounding networks, CapEx, OpEx, and security. For each of these factors he ranks Ethernet and MPLS-TP on suitability, coverage and maturity.

“It should come as no surprise that in a comparison like this Ethernet comes out ahead of MPLS-TP,” Dr. Stein comments. “Obviously, MPLS-TP loses quite a few points on maturity,” he notes. “While the Ethernet community has gone through years of interop trials and the Metro Ethernet Forum has established certification programs, none of this has been done yet for MPLS-TP.”

“But even if the maturity gap is closed, the security problem remains,” Dr. Stein explains. “MPLS packets are inherently not authenticatable, which poses a major problem in access networks,” he concludes. “Even if the security problems are addressed – and it is hard to see how that could be done without a major overhaul of MPLS – the fact that MPLS packets are not self-describing is a disadvantage in environments where application awareness is needed.”

Dr. Stein has authored numerous academic papers, standardization contributions and patent applications. He has chaired and given invited lectures at international conferences and is an active participant in several telecommunication industry standardization forums. He has coauthored and contributed many IETF RFCs, ITU-T Recommendations and MPLS Forum (now Broadband Forum) Implementation Agreements. He presently co-chairs the IETF’s Timing over IP Connection and Transfer of Clock (TICTOC) working group.

RAD Data Communications Ltd.