Forums unite to prove MPLS interoperability

CHICAGO—Eleven members of the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance conducted a Superdemo last week at Supercomm that proved the multi-vendor interoperability of multiprotocol label switching technology. The alliance also worked with the Multiservice Switching Forum to provide a proof-of-concept for VoIP over MPLS.

Participating alliance members were Agilent Technologies, Alcatel, Ciena, Cisco Systems, MRV, Native Networks, Navtel Communications, Nortel Networks, Spirent Communications, Tellabs and World Wide Packets. A “hot stage” test took place the week prior at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory. It also was supported by the European Advanced Networking Test Center.

“It was important to our membership to prove that MPLS is highly interoperable,” said Andrew Malis, chairman and president of the MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance and research fellow at Tellabs. “It gives service providers the ability to solve problems in the network and to show that the network is not just a black box.”

The demo showed the interoperability of several MPLS features and protocols including: Hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Service (H-VPLS), Label Switched Path (LSP) Ping, an ATM-MPLS interworking standard, interoperability between various Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs and voice quality for VoIP-over-MPLS.

H-VPLS gives network managers the ability to connect multiple, geographically dispersed sites in a converged IP-based multi-protocol network. LSP is an operations, administration and maintenance (OA&M) capability that helps in data plane failure detection and isolation.

“We’re not talking about technologies in search of a use. These are technologies that the services providers are driving,” said Neil Anderson, senior director of service performance analysis at Spirent.

Joining forces with the Multiservice Switching Forum, the alliance demonstrated how guaranteed voice quality can be measured and used in an MPLS environment. The results achieved will used to further testing in the upcoming Global MSF Interoperability demonstration in October.

There the MSF will demonstrate a deployable and operationally ready IP telephony network with network management, enhanced QoS and security features. Carrier participants will be Qwest, BT, NTT and Korea Telecom.