MPLS-based VPN infrastructures are being deployed by most network service providers around the world. IS already has more than three years experience in operating an MPLS VPN infrastructure. As part of the international expansion of IS’ MPLS backbone, MPLS Nodes have been deployed in London, New York and Hong Kong. IS has also established Interconnect agreements with strategic partners to facilitate extending our MPLS footprint to 85 countries around the world. Whether a site is connected directly to an IS Node or to a partner node, the entire VPN service is managed by IS from South Africa.
MPLS VPN networks provide all the benefits provided by Frame Relay, presenting a customer with a virtual network, based on a shared networking infrastructure. Additionally, MPLS provides the ability to manage differentiated quality of service within a single customer VPN. The IS MPLS network infrastructure caters for 3 Data Classes as well as a low latency queueing class to run voice and video. Since the recent announcement allowing VANs to be able to run Voice across their networks, IS can now legally run voice services across the local and international MPLS network infrastructure.
MPLS provides the same level of separation and security as Frame Relay,. MPLS seperates different IP address spaces in the shared network infrastructure by creating each network in a customer specific VRF (VPN Routing and forwarding table), allowing customers to run private address spaces within their own network or VPN, and also not be visible to Internet based attackes such as DOS attacks since the VPN and Internet are logically seperated.
It is possible to allow breakout from MPLS to the World Wide Web, however, it is adviseable that this is only achieved by using a firewall.