MPLS-Enabled Applications: Emerging Developments and New Technologies

by Ina Minei, Julian Lucek

With a foreword by Yakov Rekhter"Here at last is a single, all encompassing resource where the myriad applications sharpen into a comprehensible text that first explains the whys and whats of each application before going on to the technical detail of the hows."
--Kireeti Kompella, CTO Junos, Juniper Networks

The authoritative guide to MPLS, now in its Third edition, fully updated with brand new material!

MPLS is now considered the networking technology for carrying all types of network traffic, including voice telephony, real-time video, and data traffic. In "MPLS-Enabled Applications, Third Edition," the authors methodically show how MPLS holds the key to network convergence by allowing operators to offer more services over a single physical infrastructure. The Third Edition contains more than 170 illustrations, new chapters, and more coverage, guiding the reader from the basics of the technology, though all its major VPN applications.

"MPLS Enabled-Applications" contains up-to-date coverage of: The current status and future potential of all major MPLS applications, including L2VPN, L3VPN, pseudowires and VPLS.A new chapter with up to date coverage of the MPLS transport profile, MPLS-TP.MPLS in access networks and Seamless MPLS, the new architecture for extending MPLS into the access, discussed in depth for both the unicast and the multicast case.Extensive coverage of multicast support in L3VPNs (mVPNs), explaining and comparing both the PIM/GRE and the next generation BGP/MPLS solutions, and including a new chapter on advanced topics in next generation multicast VPNs.A new chapter on advanced protection techniques, including detailed discussion of 50 ms end-to-end service restoration.Comprehensive coverage of the base technology, as well as the latest IETF drafts, including topics such as pseudowire redundancy, VPLS multihoming, IRB and P2MP pseudowires.

"MPLS-Enabled Applications" will provide those involved in the design and deployment of MPLS systems, as well as those researching the area of MPLS networks, with a thoroughly modern view of how MPLS is transforming the networking world.

"Essential new material for those trying to understand the next steps in MPLS."
--Adrian Farrel, IETF Routing Area Director

""MPLS-Enabled Applications" takes a unique and creative approach in explaining MPLS concepts and how they are applied in practice to meet the needs of Enterprise and Service Provider networks. I consistently recommend this book to colleagues in the engineering, education and business community."
--Dave Cooper, Chief IP Technologist, Global Crossing Ltd

Genres: Technical

632 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 2005

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dabble in MPLS design and troubleshooting, but I didn't have much theoretical understanding of the reasons why MPLS networks were built the way they were. MPLS-enabled applications came to my attention when I was trying to figure out how point-to-multipoint LSPs would work in the context of IP multicast packet delivery, and it certainly delivered a solid theoretical basis for them.

I was surprised at how strongly the authors come down in favor of RSVP - LDP really comes across as an ugly hack. I was also surprised that while the book had lots of mentions of "some vendors do X and some do y", it didn't say which vendors did which, nor did it discuss the practical maturity of the respective approaches. While the RSVP bias makes sense the way they present it (it certainly comes across as a lot more powerful - LDP's only advantage that comes across is simplicity and IGP synchronization, while RSVP has TE and FRR capabilities. It would have been great to have seen "the rsvp implementation in JunOS works the way we discussed for the last N years, and Cisco introduced in in XR versions blah blah blah" or vice versa. Examples of configuration snippets in JunOS, IOS, IOS-XR or others would have been tremendously useful, and it is unfortunate that those were not included.

They also come down strongly in favor of the route-reflector+BGP autodiscovery approach to vpn signaling, and the force of their argument is very strong - it changes the work involved with configuration and deployment of a new PE, feature, or VPN from O(N^2) to O(N) - that is, a new PE only needs the RR configuration to be updated, instead of requiring that every other PE also be configured.

All in all, this was a great book on MPLS theory, but without much practical implementation detail.

[Bartek Krawczyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This plus MPLS Fundamentals from Cisco Press and you'll be a MPLS expert.