Carrier Ethernet Service: 

Delivering Multipoint VPNs with VPLS

Featuring: Tim Doiron Group Product Manager
Ethernet has taken over the LAN. In the Metro area, Ethernet has been offered as
?
Which of these statements is true?

a network option for years. But for national and global networks, IP networks are A. VPLS allows any-to-any
more common. How can service providers get the simplicity of Ethernet in their connectivity
Global WAN?
B. A typical employee wastes
Join Tim Doiron, Director, Product Management and Alla Reznik, Senior
Manager, Verizon Business Data Product Marketing as they address the 15.6 hours each week watching
benefits of VPLS, how VPLS integrates into the Ethernet services portfolio YouTube
offered by Verizon Business and how service providers can deploy VPLS to build
a stronger, more reliable network. C. 6 million people were hurt last
year texting while talking
Answer is A
> To download podcasts, visit www.inspirethenewlife.com

Additional References

Tellabs Inspire Magazine — June 2008

Carrier Ethernet Offers an Enterprising Solution
www.tellabs.com/news/reprints/inspire_june08_CarrierEth_reprint.pdf

www.tellabs.com/news/feeds/tlab_vpls.mp3

Help Needed
www.tellabs.com/news/reprints/inspire_june08_HelpNeeded_reprint.pdf

www.tellabs.com/news/feeds/tlab_helpneeded.mp3

Related Get Schooled Podcasts

Carrier Ethernet 101
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www.inspirethenewlife.com/videogallery/index.cfm?id=82E4A5EE-CD9A-1858-656976DA146E884D

One Tellabs Center • 1415 West Diehl Road • Naperville, IL 60563 • 630 798 8800 • www.tellabs.com
Statements herein may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events, products, features, technology and resulting commercial or technological benefits and advantages. These statements are for discussion
purposes only, are subject to change and are not to be construed as instructions, product specifications, guarantees or warranties. Actual results may differ materially. The following trademarks and service marks are owned by Tellabs Operations,
Inc., or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries: TELLABS®, TELLABS and T symbol®, and T symbol®. Any other company or product names may be trademarks of their respective companies. © 2008 Tellabs. All rights reserved.
 C1

8800
C2
C1
MPLS

8800 8800

C1 C2

8800
MPLS

C1 / MAC 1 C1 / MAC 3
LSP
C1 8800
Pseudowire
C2

PW 1

8800 8800

SA DA PW
SA DA PW PW 2 PW 3
MAC3 MAC1 PW1
MAC1 MAC3 PW1
MAC3 MAC2 PW3
MAC1 MAC2 PW3

8800
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Product Literature MAC3 MAC2 PW3

Virtual Private LAN Services: Extending Ethernet over the WAN

www.tellabs.com/papers/tlab_vplswan.pdf LSP
Pseudowire

Tellabs® 8800 Multiservice Router (MSR) Series — Enabling New Services and Network Convergence
www.tellabs.com/products/8000/tlab8800msr.pdf

IP/MPLS Business Solutions Primer — Tellabs® MultiservicePLuSSM Solution

www.tellabs.com/solutions/multiserviceplus/tlab_mplsbizsolutions-primer.pdf

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Tellabs® 8860 Multiservice Router

www.tellabs.com/products/8000/tellabs8860.shtml
Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS)
www.verizonbusiness.com/us/products/data/vpls

Related Whitepapers available on VZB.COM. Converged Packet Architecture

www.verizonbusiness.com/us/products/data/ethernet

One Tellabs Center • 1415 West Diehl Road • Naperville, IL 60563 • 630 798 8800 • www.tellabs.com
Statements herein may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events, products, features, technology and resulting commercial or technological benefits and advantages. These statements are for discussion
purposes only, are subject to change and are not to be construed as instructions, product specifications, guarantees or warranties. Actual results may differ materially. The following trademarks and service marks are owned by Tellabs Operations,
Inc., or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries: TELLABS®, TELLABS and T symbol®, and T symbol®. Any other company or product names may be trademarks of their respective companies. © 2008 Tellabs. All rights reserved.
Podcast Transcript
Carrier Ethernet Service: Delivering Multipoint VPNs with VPLS
Featuring: Tim Doiron Group Product Manager
Monsho: Hey, what’s up? Monsho here.
That’s right, I’m back for another session
of Get Schooled.
Now, did you do your homework? You
better be ready for today’s pop quiz.
Okay, here we go.
Which of the following statements is
correct? Is it: (a) VPLS allows any-to-
any connectivity, (b) a typical employee
wastes, hmm, 15 hours each week
watching YouTube—I mean, sure, I’m on
YouTube, or (c) six million people were
hurt last year texting while talking?
Don’t know the answer? Don’t worry, no
texting’s involved. Sit back, relax. It’s time
to get schooled, baby.
Dave Morfas: Hi. I’m Dave Morfas with
Tellabs, here today with Tim Doiron. The
topic today is VPLS.
Tim, I think the first thing we need to talk
about is what is VPLS?
Tim Doiron: VPLS stands for Virtual
Private LAN Service, and the concept of
VPLS is to take what we’ve known about
local area networks with Ethernet MAC
learning like you might have in a corpora-
tion or an enterprise and really be able to
provide that type of Layer 2 connectivity
across a metropolitan area network or
multiple metropolitan area networks, or
across national and international bound-
aries even.
Dave Morfas: Tim, is VPLS a new tech-
nology or is it a migration from an exist-
ing technology?
Tim Doiron: VPLS is really based upon
an existing technology that has been
around and deployed for about 10 years
now called MPLS, or MultiProtocol Label
Switching. VPLS is utilizing that MPLS
technology to deliver a new service to
the market. The benefits of utilizing
MPLS technology are that the protocol
and the protocol suite that makes up
MPLS is quite mature and been deployed
extensively.
In addition to that, MPLS was designed
early on with strong quality of service
capabilities so that traffic can be both
differentiated and then treated appro-
priately through the network, with the
ability to separate, as an example, best
effort traffic for Internet surfing, from
voice-over-IP traffic that has strong ser-
vice level agreement capabilities.
And then the final piece is resiliency. And
mission-critical traffic has to get through
the network in the event of failures or
other outage scenarios. Again, MPLS
brings a strong resiliency history with it
to the network.
Alla Resnik: By using MPLS, Verizon
Business is able to build a really, truly
scalable solution that customers with
multiple sites can comfortably connect
without worrying that the network will
run out of space or addresses and they
will not be able to expand.
Secondly, there is class of service. A plain
Layer 2-based Ethernet solution does
not offer class of service. VPLS brings
to the table full class of service at the
­beginning.
And finally, security. MPLS, using MPLS
in the core, Verizon Business is able to
build private connections within the net-
work to offer to customers, so customers
can comfortably rely on their VPLS solu-
tion to carry the most mission-critical
applications and not worry that their
traffic or data intercept with the traffic of
any other customer.
Dave Morfas: Tim, you mentioned Layer
2 Ethernet services, and my under-
standing is that service providers and
carriers have been implementing basic
Ethernet services, Ethernet switches for
a long time. So with VPLS, what does
that add or what differentiation does it
provide from traditional Layer 2 Ethernet
­services?
Tim Doiron: You’re right, Dave, service
providers have been offering Layer 2
Ethernet services for a while. The tradi-
tional way that’s been done is to use an
Ethernet switch or a bunch of Ethernet
switches in a given local area or metro-
politan area. That type of deployment
model faces some challenges as the
service providers try to scale it. The num-
ber of MAC addresses that need to be
learned for every device in the network
gets bigger and bigger, and that can cre-
ate challenges.
In addition to that, redundancy or resil-
iency in the network for a Layer 2 type
of switched Ethernet network, service
providers would run something like Span-
ning Tree or Rapid Spanning Tree. Those
types of protocols are harder and harder
to scale over multiple nodes, and in ad-
dition have slow convergence times. So
service providers have looked for a way
to solve those two problems and also
scale their Ethernet services out of the
metropolitan area or the local area into
multiple metro areas, or even a national
or international footprint.
VPLS provides the ability for service pro-
viders to do that by leveraging the MPLS
technology that we talked about before
that can provide a wide area network and
also provide stronger resiliency and reli-
ability in the network as well.
Alla Resnik: VPLS fits very nicely in the
overall Ethernet services portfolio offered
by Verizon Business. It is our newest
offering, and it offers one more option
for customers who want to connect their
locations across the country, anywhere
in the US in any-to-any environment.
It saves the customers the trouble of
building point-to-point connections to
connect those sites. Instead, they’re flex-
ible to determine the requirements for
bandwidths needed at each location and
build their network architecture this way.
Dave Morfas: Tim, you’ve talked about
some of the benefits from a service pro-
vider or a carrier side. Can you talk about
some of the benefits to the enterprise?
Tim Doiron: VPLS provides two key ben-
efits for enterprise customers. First and Business and utilize it for their own needs Monsho: You done already? That wasn’t
foremost, it gives the enterprise the flex- in whatever fashion they want. It’s almost too hard, was it?
ibility to connect to the service provider an enhanced private line solution, with-
The correct answer is (a), but if you live
via either a Layer 2 switch or an IP router. out service providers such as Verizon
in the UK, you may have been one of six
Business having any visibility in what a
The second key benefit is that because million people injured texting while talk-
customer might be doing with the net-
VPLS is a Layer 2 Ethernet-based service ing. Wait a minute, are you serious? They
work. It’s a robust, simple, basic solution
offering, there is no requirement for can’t text and talk at the same time?
for any customer in the United States.
IP-addressing information to be coordi- There ought to be a law.
nated or peered with a service provider Dave Morfas: Tim, what is Tellabs doing
Don’t get down if you missed the answer.
network. to address VPLS?
Remember, you can download a cheat
Alla Resnik: VPLS is really a very simple, Tim Doiron: Tellabs is advancing service sheet at inspirethenewlife.com.
very basic networking solution. It al- provider networks on a daily basis. Part
And remember, practice safe texting.
lows customers, enterprise customers, of that advancement is the Tellabs 8800
to build their network without sharing multiservice router series. The Tellabs
IP-routing tables, and it allows them to 8800 delivers to service providers a
run any protocol over the network. So carrier-class architecture, hard quality
they are flexible in whatever application, of service for traffic differentiation and
whatever network they really need to treatment, and the scalability neces-
build. They take the PLS service, which sary to deploy these services like VPLS
is secure, offers classes of service and across national and even international
any-to-any connectivity from Verizon ­boundar­ies.

One Tellabs Center • 1415 West Diehl Road • Naperville, IL 60563 • 630 798 8800 • www.tellabs.com
Statements herein may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events, products, features, technology and resulting commercial or technological benefits and advantages. These statements are for discussion
purposes only, are subject to change and are not to be construed as instructions, product specifications, guarantees or warranties. Actual results may differ materially. The following trademarks and service marks are owned by Tellabs Operations,
Inc., or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries: TELLABS®, TELLABS and T symbol®, and T symbol®. Any other company or product names may be trademarks of their respective companies. © 2008 Tellabs. All rights reserved.