Recently, at the Interop Show in Las Vegas, IT managers were polled regarding which of their favorite technologies they would like to implement in their firms. MPLS came out to be in the top three list on their agendas, just below WAN optimization and VoIP. The poll was conducted by NetQoS and Network Instruments and included more than hundred attendees of the Information Technology exposition.
The poll furthermore revealed that over half of the managers interviewed said they already have or are about to implement WAN optimization technology in the coming year. Close to 40% of the firms have already upgraded their private network system to MPLS or are planning to do this in the coming year.
MPLS, in fact, is a way of improving the corporate private network. It is especially useful for firms operating with plants or branch offices in far-away countries where internet facilities are of relatively poor quality. China is a perfect example of a situation in which MPLS can boost the company’s private network’s capabilities, both qualitatively and in terms of speed.
This still relatively underused private network protocol reduces latency and packet loss even over long distances and in that way supports demanding Quality of Service (QoS) applications between corporate offices or manufacturing plants all over the world.
Two-thirds of the managers on the Interop Show indicated that network latency is the most relevant data of importance to them when reporting on WAN optimization improvements. MPLS provided superior performance in the international telecommunication lines compared to VPN over the internet. It is also more manageable than regular Frame Relay, which many companies use for their WAN.
MPLS will soon gain market share in the US, Europe and countries such as China and Taiwan as the global economy starts to demand higher levels of efficiency in telecom and data communication between these nations and the firms operating in them.
