Can IP VPN Replace MPLS? Read This to Find Out

Can IP VPN Replace MPLS? Read This to Find Out!

Are you looking to upgrade your telecom infrastructure to get better performance, more bandwidth, and flexibility? MPLS offers great scalability for a great performance that is used by networks used by all organizations. But there are many organizations have looked at IP VPN as an alternative. However, there are some disadvantages which make things not so good for it:

Loss of Packets The internet is a network of networks and data can take any path. It often results in a longer path which increases the latency manifold.

The data paths often increase the likelihood of the congestion points which creates an increased loss of the packets.

This increased the possibility of having many congestion points creates an increased loss of the packets. With more latency and the loss of the packets often results in a reduction in the quality of experience. It may lead to longer time to transfer large files and problems in the backing up of data and synchronization.

Lower Security In an IP VPN which works on the internet delivers the data over the open network.

It means that the security of the data is not there.

As an organization, you should be aware of these pitfalls and security issue. It means that you should make sure that data is encrypted at appropriate levels so that your equipment is protected. Can you compromise on the security of the data?

Certainly not as the damage can be devastating. When you compare MPLS to IP VPN, you will find that the latter is less secure and that your data is far more vulnerable.

Class of Service It is a way to manage the traffic in a network by grouping like types of traffic together. It also means that the traffic is categorized in different classes and each type has its level of service priority. But in the internet segregation of the type of the service is not possible and that is why IP VPNs can never MPLS in this regard.

Quality of Service The very goal of QoS is to provide the guarantees on the ability of the network to deliver the results.

The various elements of network performance within the scope of QoS include the uptime, throughput, delay, and the error rate. For QoS, you need to control the entire network. The QoS is managed in the LAN from where the packets enter the network of the ISP, and once they are inside of the internet, any packet tagged for QoS is ignored by the ISP.

Real-Time Applications The delivery of real-time applications like voice and video streaming are highly demanding.

The delivery network needs should offer low latency and packet loss to deliver the acceptability quality of the experience. If there are pixilation issues, or the audio file is clipped, or the applications are frozen, it indicates towards latency and the loss of the packets.

With so many disadvantages, IP VPN is undoubtedly not the best way to create a WAN. However, there are many things which will help you decide the things in favor of MPLS network infrastructure.

Fast Processing Of the Packets In MPLS instead of IP destination based look-up, label switching is performed. The smaller MPLS header is processed quickly and provides the performance benefits.

Hiding Service Specific Information When MPLS is used on the network, only the edge devices need to keep the customer related information like the MAC address, VLAN number IP address, etc.

The core network provides the reachability between the edges. You should take a look at this find which the edges provide services and then decide the role of the critical devices in the IP and MPLS networks.

Higher Scalability When you do not have specific information on the core of the network, it offers better scalability.

Traffic Engineering MPLS provides traffic engineering capability which allows better usage capacity and guaranteed SLA for the desired service.

In the End When it comes to reliability MPLS has a clear advantage over IP VPN. With a MPLS network infrastructure you have more freedom, scalability, and ability to prioritize the traffic the way you want.