MPLS VPN WAN quadruples available bandwidth, increases agility during office moves, and lowers costs.

Article Summary:

In 2002 Cisco IT migrated its entire WAN in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) to a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPN to support multicast and quality of service (QoS), provide greater flexibility and scalability, and enable easier moves and additions of core and satellite sites. The WAN had to support growing bandwidth requirements but not cost more than the previous ATM/Frame Relay WAN.

This routing and switching case study describes the migration and benefits Cisco IT derived from deploying MPLS VPN in EMEA, including:

• Quadrupling the available bandwidth without increasing network costs
• Allowing a much easier move of the London core networking location
• Supporting any-to-any connectivity for optimal peer-to-peer applications such as IP telephony and IP video