article reprint — TELLABS INSPIRE june 2008
Carrier Ethernet Offers an Enterprising Solution
Service providers extend carrier Ethernet to the WAN to meet demand.
By M.J. Richter
Ethernet is familiar territory: The technology has long been
entrenched in LANs and expanded quickly across MANs. Now
service providers and their enterprise customers want to send
Ethernet on a mission to explore a new frontier: WANs. But how
best to chart the course toward cost-effective, scalable, easy-to-
manage bandwidth? The answer lies in Virtual Private LAN
Service (VPLS).
Under certain circumstances, IP VPN, which provides reliable
and secure point-to-point links between sites, remains a viable
option for enterprise customers. Yet VPLS is often more suited
to an enterprise’s particular connectivity requirements. Given
that VPLS is a relative newcomer to the marketplace, here’s
a closer look at what it is and how it works.
VPLS basically expands the concept of Ethernet service from a
simple two-point circuit to a multi-port, bridged service. With its
Layer-2 VPN architecture, VPLS connects multiple sites in a single
bridged Ethernet domain running over an MPLS network.
Service providers create this single Ethernet domain by building
point-to-point virtual circuits, or Pseudowires, across MPLS LSPs.
Pseudowires can function either as point-to-point links, such as
VPWS, or, with VPLS, in a full mesh. Approved by the IETF in
January 2007 (RFC 4762, Virtual Private LAN Service over LDP)
as the latest and most advanced IETF standard supporting Carrier
Ethernet service, VPLS now offers a scalable, WAN-oriented
Ethernet service that connects multiple, remote locations across
enterprise customers’ regional, national or global networks.
Plug-and-Play MAC Learning
Compared with VPLS, IP VPN requires an enterprise router to
coordinate closely with the PE router inside the service provider to
share routing information and IP addresses. For some enterprise
customers, sharing that information with the service provider raises
security concerns. Furthermore, IP-router peering obviously means
the device at the enterprise location must be a router.
how vpls works
Customer 1
Customer 1
Customer 1 Pseudowire
Ethernet
Switch
PE
Router
8800
Customer 2 Customer 2
Pseudowire
Customer 1
Customer 2
Customer 2
VPLS, on the other hand, performs Ethernet MAC learning at the
PE router, thus eliminating the need to share IP-routing information.
For example, say an enterprise uses VPLS to link four locations.
An employee at one location plugs in a laptop, and the enterprise
router or switch learns that laptop’s MAC address. It then shares
that MAC address with the PE router, which then shares it with the
other three PE routers in the VPLS, enabling the network to know
where to forward traffic, be it inside an MPLS LSP or Pseudowire.
The enterprise device can be a router or a switch and still create
the bridge to the Ethernet domain. Thus, VPLS not only eliminates
the security concern for enterprises but also the need to coordinate
IP-routing information with service providers, which can be cumber-
some for enterprises that employ a small IT staff.
QoS in the WAN
Enterprise customers frequently demand guaranteed QoS levels
for their various applications. When traffic runs over a WAN, where
bandwidth is at a premium and latency a major concern, QoS is a
crucial requirement, especially when performance-sensitive traffic
such as voice and video travel over the data path.
Although the original Ethernet standard was not designed to support
QoS for traffic prioritization, IEEE 802.1p now provides a mechanism
for implementing QoS at the MAC level. Running over an MPLS
core network, VPLS takes advantage of IEEE 802.1p to deliver
guaranteed QoS.
In essence, MPLS supports QoS with traffic prioritization marked
in the MPLS header’s EXP bits. In a VPLS-based Ethernet VPN,
a multiservice router such as the Tellabs® 8800 Multiservice Router
(MSR) Series translates the 802.1p bits from the VLAN header
to the MPLS EXP bits to provide end-to-end QoS for Ethernet
connections. As a result, VPLS can support different levels of QoS
depending on the type of traffic, customer or SLA, all while present-
ing the simple, familiar Ethernet interface to the enterprise user.
Tunnel
(LSP)
PE
Customer 2
8800
PE
8800
Customer 1
8800
PE
Customer 1
2 article reprint — Carrier Ethernet Offers an Enterprising Solution

VPLS Enhances Carrier Ethernet Scalability
Nearly all corporate LANs today are based on Ethernet, which
means enterprise users can simply plug into a network that scales
easily from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. By extending Ethernet into the
WAN, VPLS now provides that same easy, affordable scalability
when and where enterprises need it.
For example, a large financial company may operate out of a few
main offices, with hundreds of smaller offices scattered throughout
the nation or around the world. Such an enterprise probably would
opt for an IP VPN or even a Frame Relay network to link those
small offices. However, to connect larger sites that need scalable
bandwidth, VPLS offers a better solution.
To move from a 50-Mbps to a 70-Mbps service, for example, the
service provider only needs to provision the incremental bandwidth
at all relevant locations to obtain the required scalability. In opting
for the VPLS solution, customers with 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
interfaces are able to protect existing equipment investments and
avoid purchasing additional DS3 or OC-3/OC-12 circuits — at
significant cost — whenever additional bandwidth is necessary.
Connect All Those Metro Ethernet Clouds
By extending carrier Ethernet to the WAN, VPLS also enables
enterprise customers to interconnect their metro Ethernet clouds.
A large enterprise today likely uses metro Ethernet to interconnect
multiple offices within the same metropolitan area, repeating this
scenario in numerous cities across the United States and around
the world.
VPLS also brings the benefits of carrier Ethernet to enterprise
customers that still lack fiber-based network access. If a customer’s
service provider deploys PE router devices that support multiple
interfaces, such as the Tellabs 8800 MSR series, the VPLS
attachment circuits (enterprise-to-PE connections) don’t have to be
physical Ethernet connections. They can be Ethernet over SONET,
bonded T1s or Pseudowires — to name just a few choices — with
the PE router device handling the Ethernet MAC-learning chores.
VPLS Enhances and Extends the MPLS Core
For service providers, VPLS not only enables them to satisfy
enterprise customers’ demands for scalable, affordable, end-to-end
Ethernet with requisite levels of QoS, it also enables them to maxi-
mize their investments in their core MPLS-based networks. To date,
service providers have used this core networking technology for one
application: Layer-3 VPNs. Now they can extend MPLS with a new,
revenue-generating service, one based on Ethernet, not IP. After all,
the “M” in “MPLS” stands for “multiprotocol.”
By combining the now-mature carrier Ethernet with an extended
MPLS, service providers can deliver an entirely new solution:
VPLS. A Layer-2, global, reliable, QoS-enabled VPN technology
that complements existing technologies, VPLS interconnects various
Ethernet clouds with scalable, affordable bandwidth. In sum, VPLS,
working with MPLS, enables carrier Ethernet to deliver the same
end-to-end benefits to the WAN that traditional Ethernet has always
delivered to the LAN.

Prior to the emergence of VPLS, IP VPN or some type of private-line

service was the only means by which the enterprise could weave
together all of its metro-Ethernet “islands.” With VPLS, that same
large enterprise can now take advantage of end-to-end carrier
Ethernet to weave all of its operations into a single WAN in a way
that’s seamless, scalable and affordable.

Acronym MPLS LPS MPLS Label Switched Path

EXP Experimental PE Provider Edge
GigE Gigabit Ethernet QoS Quality of Service
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers SLA Service Level Agreement
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force SONET Synchronous Optical Networking
LAN Local Area Network VPLS Virtual Private LAN Service
MAC Media Access Control VPN Virtual Private Network
MAN Metro Area Network VPWS Virtual Private Wire Service
MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching WAN Wide Area Network

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