l3 MPLS or VPLS

[MD ARMAN HOSSAIN]

Hi,

To connect 10 sites to head office whcih technology would be better VPLS or MPLS? I would add more sites later on and it should have voice, video and critical application qos support. I know MPLS is better than VPLS in some respect. But VPSL comes into play where its simple network VPN deployment. I am looking for suggestion about VPLS/MPLS deployment scenario and their advantages and disadvantages.

regards,

arman

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi Arman,

I would go with L3 MPLS/VPN.  In a layer 3 VPN troubleshooting is a lot easier, because the PE has a point-to-point L3 interface with the CE.  Therefore, if there is any issue,  you can easily use tools like trace route and ping to troubleshot the interfaces  In a layer-2 environment, all sites appear to be in the same LAN even though they traverse the service provider's backbone.  Also since VPLS is deployed in networks in a point-to-multipoint fashion, the packet originating from a CE device can be broadcast to all the PE routers participating in a VPLS routing instance.

HTH

Reza

[MD ARMAN HOSSAIN]

You can have point to point vlan using VPLS as well. Am I right?

Arman

[Mbonghudson]

I believe it all comes down to what you want to achieve. MPLS VPNs and VPLS are all MPLS apps and each has a unique role. VPLS is to achieve broadcast capability at Layer 2 while MPLS VPNs are at Layer 3. These are two disparate technologies and trying to decide which one to use is like comparing bread and stone.  Choose which meets your needs. MPLS VPNs benefit the provider while VPLS enables the Customers to transparently emulate a Layer 2 protocol across the service provider MPLS backbone. STP, VTP, etc can all operate normally as within a local VLAN or switched domain.

Should require point-to-point, go in or AToM or L2TPv3