MPLS Redundancy solutions

A popular network solution a lot of companies who have branch offices are using is MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching). There are several MPLS redundancy solutions ranging from costly to cost effective. We won’t go into the technical details of setting it up, but more or less explain the solutions out there.

The ideal solution would be setting up a complete MPLS network using another service provider. This is probably the most costly solution however will give you the greatest results.

Another solution is to have point to point connections to the branch offices. This can be costly as well depending on how many branch offices there are and what other offices they need to have connectivity to.

The most cost effect solution will only give marginal performance depending on the load. You can set up an IPSEC VPN between offices using your typical broadband connections (cable, DSL). I’m actually currently in the process of setting this up for a small office that needs connectivity to a main office in the event that their MPLS link goes down.

Automating the fail-over process for these solutions should be no different than doing it for a dedicated circuit. There are multiple ways of going about it. Dynamic routing, load balancing, and setting different metrics for the 2 different routes are a few ways to do it.

This was just to give you an idea of what types of solutions are out there. In a later post, I will go into detail about the equipment that can be used and some example configurations of the scenarios given the different equipment.