Testing MPLS VPNs
Paul Doolan, co-author of a seminal book on IP switching,
stated recently that any technology requires ten years
to reach maturity. With MPLS now reaching its fifth
birthday, it is clear, as Doolan predicted, that the
technology and its applications are still evolving.
Virtually all networking technologies have required
one or more "killer" applications to stimulate
widespread acceptance and deployment. Initially, traffic
engineering (TD), which would reduce congestion and
costs and improve manageability for service provider
(SP) networks, was considered to be the most important
application for MPLS.
With the tightening economy in the U.S. and the rest
of the world, however, the focus of SPs has shifted
to exploring new avenues of revenue generation. The
result has been a dramatic increase in interest in the
use of MPLS for deployment of Virtual Private Network
services (MPLS VPNs) by both SPs and their enterprise
customers.
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