Users demanding quality of service over their managed IP VPNs soon will have two more service options to consider from Infonet and Genuity.
The two companies later this month will separately introduce class-of-service options to their network-based IP VPN services that can be attractive to users because they lift the burden of installation and management of the WAN from network executives. Class-of-service options enable prioritization of traffic so delay-sensitive traffic gets through congested areas first.
Infonet and Genuity both serve customers internationally, with Genuity having a stronger U.S. network presence and Infonet stronger in other countries. Other providers of IP VPNs, such as AT&T, Broadwing, Equant and Savvis Communications, offer classes of service using a variety of technologies, says Steve Harris, an analyst with IDC. For some customers, these classes of service are critical.
"If you want to run voice or video over your network, you want classes of service," he says, because that traffic cannot tolerate delay and jitter.
How many classes of service a company needs depends on its size. Only the largest businesses need more than two, Harris says. "It's too cumbersome. With smaller IT staffs, most of the companies I'm talking to barely have time to check their firewall logs," he says. The largest companies with healthy staffs with time to analyze their traffic flows can benefit from the various prices available for the service classes, he says.
Infonet services
Infonet next week is introducing IP VPN Secure, which is built on the company's existing Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based VPN service that runs over a network of Cisco switches and routers. The service also includes customer-site routers that Infonet manages. MPLS services have been popular with users because they let existing frame relay or ATM customers move from a point-to-point network architecture to a fully meshed architecture without the added costs. Traditionally, users were required to buy dedicated links to set up a meshed network, but MPLS lets users establish connectionless IP networks over the same frame infrastructure.
Infonet offers four classes of service called, from top to bottom, IP/RealTime, IP/Interactive, IP/LAN2LAN and IP/Access. These classes are established by marking packets using Differentiated Services (Diff-Serv) technology. Diff-Serv is an Internet Engineering Task Force-proposed standard that defines how to establish various service levels over a net.
IP/RealTime is meant for voice and video traffic; IP/Interactive is for demanding, critical applications such as CRM and enterprise resource planning; IP/LAN2LAN is for less-delay-sensitive applications; and IP/Access is for file transfers, e-mail, Web browsing and other noncritical traffic.
These four classes of service are offered in six packages that have varying mixes of service qualities. One package offers performance and price on a par with frame relay, two are less expensive, and three are more expensive but more responsive.
The service is available through 67 points of presence in the U.S. and 77 POPs in 52 other countries. The company would not reveal pricing.
Also by year-end, Infonet will offer a managed voice service over the MPLS VPN network and early next year will expand that to include a managed multimedia service. Customers could run voice and video over the network today but would have to manage the voice and video themselves.
Meanwhile, Genuity later this month will announce four service classes for its Internet Advantage Internet Access service. Until now, the provider offered only two classes - one that supports voice and video, and one for all other types of traffic. The company is adding two intermediate service classes, one for demanding data traffic and one for applications on which customers set business value but that are not as demanding.
Providers rely on different technologies for classes of services. Infonet and Genuity use Diff-Serv to mark packets for priority but carry those packets over different backbones. Infonet uses a core network based on MPLS, and Genuity uses one based on IP over SONET.
Andrew Ward, Genuity's product development manager, says running IP directly on SONET gives Genuity sufficient control over the traffic to impose service qualities.
Infonet and other carriers such as AT&T use MPLS routers connected by ATM trunks to link the Layer 3 IP customer traffic to the Layer 2.
AT&T uses a similar arrangement for its IP-enabled frame relay and contends this architecture provides Layer 2 security for the IP traffic, according to Tim Halpin, AT&T's national frame relay product manager.
Others, including Ward, say the only way to ensure security is to use authentication and encryption at either end of each connection. The company plans to announce price and availability at the end of the month.
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