It is pretty simple. There are two router vendors that actually count. The rest of posers.
Once you dig into MPLS on those two, you find the differences.
I will use some everyday analogies to explain how respectively easy it is to turn on the software on the IP box to run MPLS (your main question).
Birth Control Vendor 1: Morning after pill Vendor 2: Vasectomy
Taxes Vendor 1: 1040EZ Vendor 2: 1040 with schedules A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,509, 4411, and then audit
Get into college Vendor 1: Has to choose between full boat at Princeton or Yale Vendor 2: Has to work at Chi-Chis, get HepA, and go to local tractor trailer training school.
You wouldn't be biased would you? Well, I can understand not wanting to get fired by vendor 1, however your post has zero truth to it.
First of all, there are more than just 2 router vendors that count. Obviously there are 2 big ones, but to call the rest posers is ignorant. Who does AT&T run in their backbone? It's not one of the two you just mentioned... I guess in your eyes AT&T isn't a "real" network.
Second, I fail to see how your "analogies" provide anything but a biased opinion. You provide nothing of substance that would give us a clue you know anything. By not providing any substance, you demonstrate that, in fact, you do NOT know anything.
Now if you were to say "Vendor 1 provides a simplistic approach to enabling MPLS by abstracting lower-level functions from the CLI and allowing minimal configuration knobs that the user can adjust. While Vendor 2 provides a more complex approach to enabling MPLS by requiring more initial knowledge, but allowing for greater configuration flexibility from the CLI." that would give us a clue as to your knowledge level.
Both approaches have pros and cons, much like everthing in life.
re: Survey: Carrier Dough Flows to IP/MPLS"When people discuss IP and IP/MPLS, what is the actual difference in the network elements or line cards involved?"
Some vendors produce specific line cards with MPLS built into Hardware.
Some of the these hardware cards are centralized with no interface ports on them and the MPLS is in H/W is available to all of the I/O modules.
Most vendors use MPLS H/W on interface I/O modules the limitation is that MPLS is limited to that module.
Either approach works. The best (although may be expensive and hard to do with changing drafts) is to have all MPLS features built into all IP hardware. This is difficult with ASICs and possible with micro code programmable ASICs or FPGA.
Extreme and Procket are two examples of the Micro code ASICS.
re: Survey: Carrier Dough Flows to IP/MPLSWhen it comes to multi-service MPLS edge routers I have seen a lot of promises, but not much delivery. By multiservice I mean delivering normal IP (Internet routing) service, 2547 Layer 3 VPN service, plus Layer 2 Virtual Psuedo Wire Service (aka Martini) for FR, ATM and Ethernet, layer 2 VPLS. And allow for various service interface types NxDS0, DS1, NxDS1, DS3, OCx and Ethernet (GigE and FE) for FR (at OCx speeds also), PPP, ATM and Vlan.
The router-legacy boxes just don't seem to have a good layer 2 story. Others don't seem to have good layer 3. The closest I have seen to a real, delivered (not just planned) multiservice box that does have a large subset of the above at scale would have to be someone like Laurel Networks (being used this way at Level 3).
I do see a lot of "stories" around every vendors platform that they will do all these things and more. Well, I will believe it when I see it in a production network.
re: Survey: Carrier Dough Flows to IP/MPLSWhat type of boxes constitute metro Ethernet quoted in the article? Are they packet based equipment such as from Extreme and Foundry or TDM based equipment (Ethernet on SONET) such as from Nortel (Optera 3500) or Lucent (DMX).
re: Survey: Carrier Dough Flows to IP/MPLSMr EC said: "When people discuss IP and IP/MPLS, what is the actual difference in the network elements or line cards involved?"
MP of MPLS stands for Multiprotocol, so MPLS does not automaticaly mean IP. While MPLS orginated on IP routers, almost every ATM/FR switch vendor now supports MPLS in some fashion.
When people discuss IP and IP/MPLS, what is the actual difference in the network elements or line cards involved?
EC