Packet Design Intros New Route Explorer

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Packet Design has extended the power of its route analytics technology into the fast- growing MPLS VPN market with a new "VPN-aware" version of its Route Explorer appliance.

Route Explorer/MPLS VPN for the first time gives service providers full visibility into the layer 3 virtual private network infrastructure. With instant knowledge of both reachability within a customer's VPN, and privacy between VPNs, providers can offer their enterprise customers far more reliable VPN services.

Route Explorer/MPLS VPN incorporates the IETF RFC 2547bis standard widely adopted by service providers to deliver revenue-generating IP VPN services to enterprise customers. RFC 2547bis VPNs use both BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching). BGP, the routing protocol used to connect to the Internet, distributes the layer 3 VPN routing information that defines which customer sites can talk to each other across the provider's core network. MPLS handles forwarding of the traffic.

The new system adds support for MP-BGP (Multi-protocol BGP) to Route Explorer's already advanced BGP analysis functionality, which monitors and analyzes BGP routing events. Providers now can see network topology views broken out by individual customer VPN, and use specialized BGP diagnostic tools to pinpoint VPN-specific problems.

Packet Design Inc.