Metaswitch’s MPLS-TP Solution for Communication Equipment Manufacturers
Utilize the GMPLS experts to deliver a well proven, fully featured MPLS-TP solution, supporting the latest standards and features while greatly reducing development costs, time to market and risk.
MPLS-TP
The next-generation transport network is migrating to packet transport technologies in an effort to reduce both CAPEX and OPEX. Equipment manufacturers need to support next-generation packet transport networks while maintaining the features that carriers find essential, such as comparable QoS, protection and restoration, and OAM that is available with traditional SONET/SDH and WDM/DWDM transport networks.
MPLS-TP is a profile of the hugely popular and widely deployed MPLS technology, specifically adapted to provide a client-independent, carrier-grade packet transport plane with all the features that carriers find essential in their existing transport networks, including sub-50ms recovery and extensive OAM. MPLS-TP operates in two modes using management provisioning or a GMPLS control plane, which was originally developed for TDM and optical networks, but has been extended for MPLS-TP by the IETF.
The Solution
Deliver MPLS-TP quickly to your customers with the confidence, reliability and support that come with a Metaswitch MPLS-TP Solution for Communications Equipment Manufacturers. Metaswitch enables rapid integration of MPLS-TP support through standards-based extensions to its mature and widely deployed GMPLS control plane software, including pre-integrated OAM support, High Availability Framework, manual and automated provisioning and sophisticated protection and restoration.
The immediate availability of the MPLS-TP extensions and features from Metaswitch’s portable GMPLS solutions greatly reduces time to market and development cost. Metaswitch brings GMPLS expertise and 30 years of experience delivering portable networking solutions to communications equipment manufacturers, helping them build access, aggregation and transport devices. We are established leaders in portable GMPLS solutions and are closely involved in the MPLS-TP standards process.
With Metaswitch you are assured
- technology you can trust from the GMPLS experts
- reduced project time to market
- a solution that is a fraction of the cost of developing the same functionality in-house
- reduced risk by partnering with a 30 year industry stalwart
- world class support and services.
The Challenge
Service providers are demanding the most
expansive next-gen packet transport network.
To meet this need, communication equipment
manufacturers must deploy a MPLS-TP solution that:
- is quick to market
- adheres to the latest standards
- has proven multi-vendor interoperability
- scales with the demands of next generation networks
- is open and customizable for diverse network requirements.
MPLS-TP Transport Network
Features and Benefits of Metaswitch’s portable MPLS-TP Solution
Deploying Metaswitch’s portable MPLS-TP solution minimizes risk and reduces development time. It is a proven solution that is fully supported and includes the latest standards and features.
Reduced Risk: Metaswitch’s GMPLS expertise, superior support, and field-proven MPLS-TP functionality provide communication equipment manufacturers with the assurance that Metaswitch is the optimal source and partner for MPLS-TP control plane solutions.
Reliable: A main objective of MPLS-TP is to deliver increased reliability and resiliency to MPLS. For its MPLS-TP solution, Metaswitch builds upon its history of delivering fault tolerant solutions:
Range of Management Options: Metaswitch software provides extensive management functions enabling easy integration of management agents which can be based on SNMP (with IET-standard MIB definitions), TL1, GUI, CLI or other implementations. A wide variety of management agents can be used, including pre-integration with our partners’ products.
Management information is maintained in the core products – removing duplication and avoiding complexity in the agent. The products have been designed to facilitate building devices that support both management and control plane provisioned MPLS-TP, allowing OEMs to sell their systems into the broadest possible market, making integration with the management agents simple, even in a distributed system.
Flexible MPLS-TP OAM Support: Adding extensive OAM capabilities to MPLS is an important aspect of MPLS-TP as it enables SONET/SDH-like monitoring capabilities for MPLS. Metaswitch appreciates that there are varying (and conflicting) OAM approaches within the industry which show no signs of getting resolved in the near future. Metaswitch addresses this concern by offering a flexible MPLS-TP OAM solution, which supports the various OAM implementations under consideration by the industry. The end result is lower project risk and reinforcement of Metaswitch’s commitment to providing technology you can trust.
For more information, see Metaswitch's solution for Addressing the MPLS-TP OAM Divide.
Open and Customizable: Key run-time architectural decisions are made available to system developers via well documented and open interfaces that integrate DC-MPLS with the host platform to ensure implementation flexibility. Additionally, throughout the Metaswitch GMPLS code, developers may make value-add enhancements to the software behind well defined APIs. This allows the common core code to be maintained while encouraging product differentiation for each customer.
Scalability: The flexible architecture of DC-MPLS products means that the software can be distributed across multiple processors. The same portable product code executes without modification from low end single-processor systems through to high port density systems with multiple cards and multiple processors – providing a truly scalable solution.
Exceptional Support: The portable MPLS-TP solution from Metaswitch includes access to support, training and professional services which will abate integration concerns and reduce time to market. Metaswitch’s support has received top marks from its customers with a recent 96.4% rating for support that has met or exceeded expectations.
More on Metaswitch Expertise and Support
Metaswitch is the leader in the development of portable networking software products and is continually involved in the development of the GMPLS standards, including co-authorship and contributions to many of the IETF RFC drafts and OIF specifications. This has resulted in many milestones.
- The first portable GMPLS protocol solution in the world. The first GMPLS specification was the MPL(ambda)S drafts from Calient Networks and others in 2000. These became the GMPLS drafts during 2001. Metaswitch developed its GMPLS solution working alongside Calient.
- The first portable G.709 OTN protocol solution in the world. Delivered in early 2010, fully compliant with ITU G.709 and IETF RFC4328.
- The first portable MPLS-TP protocol solution in the world. Delivered in early 2010, fully compliant with the latest drafts and standards.
- The first portable UNI protocol solution in the world. In early 2001, Metaswitch extended its GMPLS software to support OIF UNI. In June 2001 the OIF mounted a UNI demonstration at SuperComm. And half of the 22 devices in that demonstration used our software.
- The first portable LMP protocol solution in the world. DC-LMP includes IETF and OIF UNI support.
Metaswitch’s support and training is considered one of the top assets and is continually graded the best by customers. We employ a first-rate support engineering team with detailed knowledge and problem-solving ability. Support engineers have tenure with the company and move between development and support. This allows the support team to benefit from a full flow of knowledge from the engineering side and that the engineers developing the product have an understanding for real world customer support and deployment issues.
By deploying Metaswitch’s portable MPLS-TP solution customers receive
- training services to educate customer engineering staff and help with integration and testing
- comprehensive support services
- professional services to assist with customer-specific integration, feature enhancement, and testing.