What about all the benefits of an IP VPN without any of their complexity and loss of control?

Layer 2 Ethernet Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are the wide-area networking technology for the future. More commonly known as VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Services, industry commentators predict the market for VPLS will take off in 2009.

Don’t worry - Layer 2 Ethernet VPNs still give you MPLS.

But our MPLS connection-oriented core network uses Ethernet as its service layer in order to be able to build multi-site WANs or point to point services.
As you know, the connection-oriented characteristics of MPLS are what gives it its low-latency speeds and ability to offer service levels. So our VPNs give you all these advantages of MPLS and combine them with all the cherished attributes of Ethernet (cost, ease of use, scalability and familiarity).

The industry is turning its back on IP VPNs which are difficult to configure, manage and suffer from multi-hop latency.

What does this mean for my business?

VPLS, or layer 2 Ethernet VPNs, are now generally accepted as the way forward. However many network service providers are hampered by the scale of their legacy products; network infrastructure and processes. The NGNs offered by many service providers use a Layer 3 architecture. This, however, has a number of drawbacks such as complexity of solutions and the fact that it leads to a loss of customer control of IP routing.  
Which is why Exponential-e’s single-minded focus on Ethernet as the de facto networking technology for the WAN opens up new opportunities for our customers. Exponential-e sought to develop an innovative solution that addressed these limitations.
We believed from day one that the key to a business-grade next generation network was using simple, but ultra fast layer 2 services to build sophisticated solutions for enterprises. 

What began with the use of point-to-point Martini tunnels to create wide area networks has now progressed to the new industry standard of VPLS to create any to any WANs.

	Layer 3 2547bis	Layer 2 VPLS
Protocol	Limited to IP only, so special handling needed to make some applications available on the network	Multi-protocol Ethernet – if the application can run on your LAN then it can run on the WAN
Architecture	Routed solution so customer’s routers have to navigate service provider routers to connect with each other	Bridged solution so customer’s routers only see routers of their own network – transparent WAN to customer
Control	Customers lose control of IP routing	Customer retains control of IP routing
Change: Adding sites	Complex as all service provider routers connecting sites need routing changes	Simple, only the service provider router the site connects to needs changing
Change:      IP changes	Service provider needs to agree all IP address changes	IP addressing is simpler. No need to involve service provider
Faults: Management	Very difficult to fix faults – costing time and money for service provider	Service provider does not need to deal with customer routing issues – fewer fault calls, quicker and cheaper fault fixing
Faults: Calls	No clear demarcation between customer and service provider network – resulting in customer fault calls when the issue is on the customer network	Clear demarcation of service provider and customer results in less stress for customer and less cost for service provider

No matter what your wide area network requirement, number and type of office locations and bandwidth needs, we’re specialists in building simple to manage, easy to run and cost-effective wide area networks.