Bell Business Insights newsletter

Top 5 applications for MPLS-enabled networks

A new generation of applications is helping enterprises to cut costs and work smarter. While multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) is nothing new, the smart applications that ride on top of it continue to proliferate. More than half of Canada’s large organizations have migrated from legacy layer 2 based services such as Frame Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) to harness the power of an MPLS-enabled, all-IP network. Take a look at our top five application choices to find out why!

SIP trunks

A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk connection enables Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone calls to any destination. The call is routed through an IP Private Branch Exchange (PBX), riding on a telecom provider’s IP backbone. It shares the same local access connection used for your data service – IP routing that can reduce long distance costs. Further cost savings are realized by reducing or eliminating the need for Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) gateways, interface cards and in some cases simple analogue trunks.

Why SIP trunks? In addition to cost savings, SIP trunks deliver a better audiovisual experience. Digital encoding combined with the Quality of Service (QoS) inherent in an MPLS core has no trouble delivering excellent sound quality and rich information such as high-definition caller images and presence details.

Native IP multicasting

This innovative one-to-many data transfer protocol greatly reduces bandwidth and server requirements. Multicasts require data to be sent only once, even if it is to be delivered to a large number of recipients. The nodes immediately upstream of the recipients replicate the packet as needed. In this way, multicasting scales to a larger receiving population by not requiring prior knowledge of who or how many receivers there are.

Say, for example, the CEO wants to send a video presentation to 1000 employees. The way it works today is that the transmitter sends the data 1000 times. With multicasting, one packet is sent and the network replicates it at the last possible instant. Call it just-in-time delivery – a new way of building intelligence into the network.

IP videoconferencing

Do you remember staring at a boardroom screen full of people who looked as though they hadn’t turned the room lights on? The muddy interface and complicated controls you might remember are gone, replaced with the crystal clear image and sound of digital videoconferencing in High Definition (HD).

Thanks to Internet Protocol and a QoS-enabled MPLS core, videoconferencing is far less of a bandwidth hog and the sound and picture quality are substantially enhanced. What’s more, high quality cameras, located just above the screen, ensure eye contact continues to play its important role in meaningful conversation. 

Although many firms use reduction in travel as a key business driver for IP videoconferencing, the real value lies in bringing key resources together in two different meetings on the same day. High quality videoconferencing comes in conference room, high-end telepresence and desktop varieties. It is one of the cornerstones of Unified Communications and is now being used as an everyday communication medium.

Site-to-site WAN VoIP

Wide area networks (WANs) can span a city or the entire world. What they all share in common is a need for continuous, uninterrupted connectivity and efficient data transfer. MPLS provides a fully meshed survivable core for WAN VoIP networks while ensuring that QoS is strictly maintained. The result? Richer applications run across the network with less latency and more predictable performance, at a reduced cost.

IP/PBX desktop VoIP

How would you like to connect to any extension on the corporate network without incurring long distance fees? Desktop VoIP makes this a reality along with a host of other advanced features such as automated attendant, find me - follow me, conference calling and much more. Desktop VoIP also reduces latency and boosts productivity by transparently routing office calls to a home or mobile telephone, sending voice mail to email or alerting callers of ‘busy’ status before a call is placed.

Once a VoIP PBX service is in place, moving an employee phone is a snap: unplug it and switch – the phone number moves with the user, minimizing configuration requirements. With Web and video conferencing, users can see the person that they are talking with for a more personalized experience. The possibilities are almost endless, with applications that allows customer service representatives to see customer contact and account information when a call is received, one touch calling from your contact database and more.

How to get started

If you are considering making the move to MPLS, you will find great value in establishing your requirements and creating an overall roadmap towards the end-state that you wish to achieve.

Bell is a leader in the field of MPLS-based applications for the enterprise. We can assist with all stages of the move to IP VPN – from an audit of your environment to creating a roadmap to implementation. To find out more about MPLS, the applications that take advantage of the technology or how Bell can help bring its benefits to your organization, contact your Bell representative or click here to have a Bell representative contact you.