New Edge Networks, wholly owned by Earthlink, has recently launched MPLS over DSL. Why is this an important announcement? Any business that has multiple locations will typically need to access resources at another location. Applications like voice, and some data applications like real time ERP require packets to be delivered quickly otherwise the application will timeout or in the case of voice become garbled or have the call dropped.
Prior to the New Edge announcement if you needed MPLS with COS to access corporate applications you needed to pay for excessive bandwidth or utilize DSL and potentially deal with traffic congestion (high latency) and packet loss, since the delivery of packets over DSL is best effort. By extending COS to DSL access customers can have a true blended MPLS network.
The pricing for the DSL with MPLS and COS is $225. When compared to T-1 pricing which can range from $400 to over $700 based on the local loop mileage you can quickly see the cost savings that can be achieved for companies with a lot of small branch locations, like retail.
Now to be clear some carriers can integrate DSL into a MPLS network, but they do not allow the customer to assign priority to different applications or types of traffic. As a New Edge engineer stated: "Some providers offer LAN queuing and call it CoS, but CoS tags are stripped when the traffic hits the larger network. Also some providers offer Quality of Service and call it CoS, but tags are applied to the entire bandwidth stream, not to packets within the bandwidth."
Here is a product sheet. They also provide a pretty slick console for monitoring location traffic.
For more information or to get a quote give us a call at 888-200-8647. We represent all of the major MPLS providers and can provide recommendations on the best way to design, or redesign, your network to get the highest reliability and the lowest cost.