The Forces Behind 10 Gbe and MPLS Adoption

We regularly cover 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) and MPLS technologies addressing everything from the basics of MPLS to the importance of accurate 10 GbE analysis. Today, Sandra Miller of Processor Magazine covered the market factors driving the growth in 10 GbE and MPLS adoption.

MPLS Deployments
According to a recent study by Nemertes Research, “MPLS-based services grew from 24% to 42% between 2004 and 2006.”

She also spoke with our manager of sales engineering, Charles Thompson. “Thompson sees MPLS becoming commonplace as the technology is increasingly being engineered into architectural designs. ‘In some ways, it’s being forced upon the user base because the carriers are transitioning away from legacy technologies, especially frame relay,’ he says.

Another factor contributing to the shift toward MPLS is the trend toward decentralization. ‘You look at companies that are starting to have multiple data centers, multiple disaster recovery sites located both here in the U.S. and around the world. Decentralization is being pushed by two factors. One factor being the sheer amount of data that organizations are moving through the network,’ notes Thompson.“

Adoption of 10 GbE
There’s no doubt that the number of 10 GbE implementations is growing at a very steady pace. It’s one of the areas that we see driving demand for our analyzers. As a result of the strong demand for 10 GbE networks, we developed some unique analysis tools for the 10 GbE environment.

“Aside from carriers, Thompson is seeing more companies migrate to hosted apps as bandwidth becomes available. However, many of the people that Thompson has spoken to seem to think the emergence of a mesh network such as MPLS could push 10GbE to the back burner. “Now I don’t have these giant single pipes running to a main location. Instead, I’ve got a lot of smaller pipes running to different locations,” Thompson theorizes, although he estimates that scenario holds true in only half of cases.

But with 10GbE coming down in price, Thompson thinks that enterprises will begin to free up their GbE ports that previously ran as backbones or inner switch connects and expand infrastructures by adding a few 10GbE links while reallocating smaller links.“

10 GbE and MPLS Resources
10 Gig Analysis – Network Instruments
Technical 10 GbE Overview – Transition Networks
10 Gigabit Ethernet to See Widespread Adoption in 2008 – VMBlog
Guide to MPLS – NetworkWorld
MPLS In-depth – Wikipedia