We are looking for some MPLS connectivity between Equinix Ashburn and
Equinix San Jose who would the group recommend?
as much contempt as I have at times for Verizon, they've not been a bad
carrier with respect to reliability. Our MPLS cloud has been pretty stable
why not just buy a wave on someone's dwdm system? (why mpls, I
suppose, for what sounds like a ptp application)
Hi Leo:
Just trying to understand the lingo. What do you mean by buying a "wave" on
someone's dwdm system? And what is dwdm?
Thanks for the heads up!
Hi Leo:
since you are addressing my comment, probably you meant 'chris' there...
Just trying to understand the lingo. What do you mean by buying a "wave" on
someone's dwdm system? And what is dwdm?
'wave' - wavelength, one optical path (though a single wavelength used not many)
'dwdm' - dense wave division multiplexing, many optical transport
systems today multiplex different optical wavelengths on a single
fiber. Most optical transport vendors will sell you one wavelength
from point to point on their system, or many waves if you need more
than one wave's capacity.
-chris
I assume you mean some l2 circuit. That is something we can do here at ntt. www.us.ntt.net should get you to the right place.
Jared Mauch
My apologies! I was still finishing up my morning coffee so it hasn't kicked in yet.....
Thank you for the explanation however!
=)
The native wavelength for most longhaul DWDM systems is 10G, and not
everybody needs to buy bandwidth in 10Gbps increments. Waves are also
unprotected, and you're expected to buy multiple diverse paths and
manage your own protection if you'd like the service to stay up. In this
type of situation, where the customer doesn't have much economy of scale
and needs to buy 2x10G of waves just to get 10G of protected bandwidth,
MPLS transport can often be a cheaper, more reliable, and more flexible
solution, even for point to point applications between major points on
commodity routes.
In this particular scenario, if they need less than say 4-5 Gbps, need
to be burstable, or are after specific latency and/or protection goals,
MPLS would probably be a clear winner over waves. But note that I still
have enough shame not to spam the list with pointers to the MPLS
transport services my company offers. 
We have been looking into Sprint but one issue we are running into is
lack of IPv6 support. So we are looking into Level3 and Global. I
think Equinix may also have its own connectivity they can sell you.
Um, if you order an MPLS connection between two distant sites, doesn't
the provider normally (in my experience) just hand you ports that are
effectively layer 2? IPvAnything doesn't even factor in.
~Seth
oh, so it occurs to me that when I read the original post I read it as
'mpls network' not 'mpls p2p link', I suppose if the OP was looking
for an L2 circuit emulated across an MPLS network ... that's the same
thing as a wave (basically) at the customer hand off.
-chris
That's why one never should use "MPLS" when talking about customer connections, unless they're actually carriers carrier or something like that.
L2 or L3 VPN is fine, that is a service, MPLS is a way to produce that service. Asking for "MPLS connectivity" is just asking for misunderstandings.