Waters Corp., a Milford, Mass., company that makes testing products for pharmaceutical, chemical and other companies, has been putting its WAN through some testing.
The subject of the test: whether to stick with a reliable but expensive frame relay network or move to an IP VPN that promises to deliver more bandwidth for less money, but possibly with lower performance and other unpleasant surprises.
Frame relay hangs in
Bulletproof VPN
As it turns out, Waters has seen enough evidence - including new gear that provides for adequate back-up links - to convince the company to move to an IP VPN, albeit slowly.
Waters has relied on frame relay services from AT&T to connect about 27 international sites to corporate headquarters. Most of the traffic running over the network is generated via SAP and Lotus Notes applications, says Bob Andrews, director of worldwide communications for Waters.
The company began installing IP VPN links almost two years ago to connect several sites that previously had no link to corporate headquarters.
"We weren't brave enough at that time to go out and replace our frame network," Andrews says.
But the IP VPN connections performed well, and when increasing traffic forced Waters to look at adding bandwidth to some frame relay sites, Andrews decided to go with IP VPN connections. There wasn't much of a cost difference between 64K bit/sec frame and 128K bit/sec IP VPN links.
"But as you increased the frame speed to 128K bit/sec and higher, it became significantly more expensive than the VPNs," he adds.
Andrews got quotes from a number of service providers, including AT&T, UUNET, WorldCom and Equant, for dedicated Internet access. However, he found that none could serve all the countries where Waters had offices.
Andrews ended up choosing UUNET dedicated Internet access services in the countries the carrier could serve. In other countries, the company went with local access options.
Waters began replacing some of its frame relay lines late last year.
"One thing we quickly found was that DSL services were more broadly available internationally than we thought," Andrews says.
He wasn't sure how well DSL would perform, especially in countries such as China and India. But he's been pleasantly surprised so far.
"In fact," Andrews says, "our poorest performing VPN was one we installed in Tokyo with a dedicated Internet access circuit."
Waters is basing its IP VPN on equipment from Cisco and SonicWall, whose gear is replacing that from Nokia. SonicWall got the nod because its equipment better met Waters' need to support back-up links.
"If there are two Internet providers using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, [the equipment] can cut over from one to the other right away," Andrews says.
Waters also uses the gear to back up its dedicated Internet access links with ISDN, although Andrews says the ISDN backup hasn't been as automatic as he would like.
Waters already has Cisco 2500 routers installed at its international sites for frame connections and continues to use those devices for the IP VPN links. If the connection drops on the 2500, the router is supposed to fail over automatically to a Cisco 760 router, which supports the ISDN connection. However, Andrews says, the 2500 doesn't always fail over properly to the 760.
"What we found is that the 760s were based on technology from a Cisco acquisition and never worked well with IOS [Cisco's operating system for its routers and switches]," he says.
While the 760s remain in place, Andrews is searching for an even better back-up architecture.
Andrews says it's difficult to calculate how much Waters has saved by moving from frame to IP VPNs, because frame and connectivity prices vary so much from one country to the next.
In Denmark, Waters was paying about $1,500 per month for a 64K bit/sec frame relay circuit. The company now pays $253 per month for 512K bit/sec DSL.
In Spain, Waters paid about $1,200 per month for its 64K bit/sec frame. Now it pays $1,050 per month for a dedicated Internet access circuit.
Even in areas where the savings aren't substantial, Andrews says, the performance boost has been significant. Waters' lowest IP VPN link is 128K bit/sec, and the IP VPN connections range up to 512K bit/sec.
Waters has yet to experience any significant drawbacks with moving to an IP VPN.
But one minor drawback is that instead of dealing with one provider for all its remote needs, the company now has to deal with several local providers.
"Instead of us calling the carrier from corporate, each individual country calls the ISP that's responsible," Andrews says. "That hasn't been a major problem so far."
Another inconvenience is that with frame relay, Waters could monitor its bandwidth utilization by application. So far, the firm has not yet found a way to do that with the IP VPN, although Andrews says there may be a way for him to break down the traffic with the SonicWall boxes.
Ultimately, Waters plans to switch all its frame connections to IP VPN links. But the company is in no rush to switch.
"We're going to keep monitoring the performance and seek back-up solutions before proceeding too quickly," Andrews says.
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