Networx contract validates VPLS

The big news in the carrier world is last week’s awarding of Networx, the General Services Administration’s $20-billion-plus project for revamping the U.S. government’s telecom infrastructure. Networx is a 10-year program that will provide domestic and international telecommunications services including voice, data, video and wireless to the U.S. federal government, and replaces the two predecessor contracts, FTS 2000 and FTS 2001.

As telco aficionados are well aware, winners in the Networx project are AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest. That leaves Sprint (which has supplied telecom services to the government for the past 18 years) the clear odd man out.

What happened? At press time, the GSA isn’t talking, but it’s clear that the award firmly validates a strong commitment to MPLS-based services overall, and VPLS services in particular. Networx specifies support for MPLS, and you’ll recall that Sprint was slow to get on the MPLS bandwagon. As recently as a few years back, Sprint was still insisting publicly that MPLS wasn’t necessary. And even today, MPLS remains a low priority for Sprint — the company recently acknowledged that it rolled out barely 50% of planned additional countries on its MPLS network. I don’t know why they’re so balky on the topic, but it’s clearly cost them big time.

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The big news in the carrier world is last week’s awarding of Networx, the General Services Administration’s $20-billion-plus project for revamping the U.S. government’s telecom infrastructure. Networx is a 10-year program that will provide domestic and international telecommunications services including voice, data, video and wireless to the U.S. federal government, and replaces the two predecessor contracts, FTS 2000 and FTS 2001.

As telco aficionados are well aware, winners in the Networx project are AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest. That leaves Sprint (which has supplied telecom services to the government for the past 18 years) the clear odd man out.

What happened? At press time, the GSA isn’t talking, but it’s clear that the award firmly validates a strong commitment to MPLS-based services overall, and VPLS services in particular. Networx specifies support for MPLS, and you’ll recall that Sprint was slow to get on the MPLS bandwagon. As recently as a few years back, Sprint was still insisting publicly that MPLS wasn’t necessary. And even today, MPLS remains a low priority for Sprint — the company recently acknowledged that it rolled out barely 50% of planned additional countries on its MPLS network. I don’t know why they’re so balky on the topic, but it’s clearly cost them big time.

As for VPLS, Networx also specifically requested VPLS support as part of the contract. And while nothing gets a carrier’s attention like $20 billion worth of potential business, VPLS momentum was well underway prior to Networx. Verizon recently announced national availability of VPLS services, and AT&T has limited deployment in about 20 cities — there’s no doubt that Networx added fuel to the fire. Word is that Qwest had developed its VPLS offering primarily in anticipation of Networx. And the interest is contagious: alternative providers Masergy and Broadwing both offer VPLS services. (Masergy was the first to deploy VPLS services in the United States in 2003.)

So what is VPLS and why is it so popular? Based on the MPLS specification developed by the IETF, VPLS addresses some of the specific challenges with extending Ethernet across the WAN, most notably scalability and availability. Because it’s a layer 2 service, enterprises control their own routing tables, and can implement security functions (such as encryption) on top of their networks. (For more of an explanation, see here.)

Thanks to this increased security and flexibility, enterprises love VPLS. Nearly half of the folks I work with say they’re using Metro Ethernet services, with another 14% using VPLS-based services today.

So if you’re one of the enterprises who’d like to be using VPLS, but aren’t currently, push your carriers on the topic. The market’s expanding quickly, and options are increasingly available from mainstream as well as alternative providers.

If you’re an equipment provider, don’t overlook the opportunities of VPLS. Established players (Cisco, Juniper, Nortel, Tellabs) as well as upstarts have an opportunity to play.

And if you’re a carrier? Don’t pull a Sprint. Focus on adding VPLS to your portfolio, if you aren’t offering it already.

Read more about lans & wans in Network World's LANs & WANs section.