MPLS Site-to-Site VPN Solutions

Smart, Superior Performance For All Your Business Applications

Are you struggling to support more critical applications (such as voice, video, email, credit card processing, database access) to branch offices and remote users, even though IT budgets are constraining support staff resources and network investments? Increasing network costs are an all-too-familiar reality for distributed businesses of all sizes and industries. By taking advantage of the widespread availability of broadband access services, you can provide high-speed connectivity to all the users your network needs to support, with the built-in flexibility to ensure the applications they rely on are running at performance speed. Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)VPN service from MegaPath is a cost-effective solution that enables you to consolidate all your business applications onto a single private network, with up to five Classes of Service (CoS), and built-in security capabilities aligned to business communications, access and information sharing demands. A MegaPath MPLS site-to-site VPN is well-suited for dynamic, challenging network environments because MPLS acts as the smart traffic engineer, controlling at the packet level. Troublesome, bandwidth-hogging applications are no match for an agile MPLS solution from MegaPath.

How Our Experience With MPLS VPN Technologies Benefits You

MPLS may not be a household term, but it is the fastest growing wide area networking (WAN) technology and widely used by leading carriers around the world. MPLS blends the performance and privacy of legacy WAN technologies (like frame relay) with the flexibility and cost advantages of Internet-based networks, like IPSec VPNs. For more than 10 years MegaPath has been supporting distributed enterprise users across 20,000 customer sites and 70,000 endpoints with MPLS VPN services. MegaPath access services, including private DSL, cable, wireless, satellite, T1, and DS3 technologies, solve the 'best fit' and lowest cost connectivity issues your organization faces as you work to provide fast and reliable connectivity at all your sites. As a component of our security portfolio, this service can be combined with the complete suite of MegaPath Managed Security Services and Remote Access VPNs to create an enterprise-wide solution. If connectivity and information sharing with your suppliers, distributors, customers and business partners are part of your network requirements, MegaPath network traffic engineers can extend the reach of your MPLS VPN to sites connected over the public Internet using IPSec tunneling.

Why Service Quality Matters

By leveraging the MegaPath all-optical nationwide network and MPLS routing infrastructure to provide Quality of Service (QoS), the MegaPath network experts you rely on will partner with you to ensure business-critical applications like Voice over IP (VoIP) and enterprise applications are prioritized for the highest level of quality. QoS is important because it:

• Enables the prioritization of business-critical applications
• Allows you to control how bandwidth is allocated
• Ensures consistent, interruption-free network performance
• Prevents critical applications from failing due to network congestion

Reliable, Fully Managed Network

When you rely on MegaPath's Site-to-Site MPLS VPN service, you gain the collective network experience of managed network services team and eliminate the hassle of dealing with encryption devices and complex routing schemes that make Do-It-Yourself VPN too complicated, costly, and time-consuming. Even sophisticated IT staffs and architects are challenged to support the application needs and high expectations of their users. MegaPath knows networks and we take care of everything from initial design and deployment, to 24/7 monitoring and customer support. Our skilled engineers and field technicians configure your equipment, install at your locations, and provision all necessary circuits. And, a dedicated MegaPath Project Manager ensures that all your contracted services are implemented correctly and on-time. Once your service is up and running, our Network Operations Center (NOC) technicians proactively monitor your MPLS connections and equipment - ready to diagnose and resolve any issues and quickly minimize service impact. We even repair or replace any non-operational equipment on-site, and to demonstrate our commitment to your satisfaction, we guarantee the performance of our Site-to-Site MPLS VPN service with a comprehensive set of end-to-end Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Call us with confidence!

How a MegaPath MPLS VPN Solves Your Network Challenges

Megapath's MPLS Site-to-Site VPN Network service delivers an unmatched combination of performance, privacy and flexibility that make it the best solution to augment, back up or replace your legacy frame relay or ATM WAN.

Features

• Fully Meshed MPLS VPN - Provides privacy and direct site-to-site communication without costly permanent virtual circuits (PVCs).
• Quality of Service (QoS) - Prioritizes performance-sensitive and business-critical applications for optimal delivery.
• Comprehensive SLAs: Ensures maximum availability and network performance.
• 24x7x365 Proactive Monitoring and Support: End-to-end management of entire network.
• PCI Compliant - Payment Card Industry data security compliant

Benefits
A Site-to-Site MPLS VPN from MegaPath offers privacy, performance, and flexibility.

• Privacy - MPLS routing technology provides network privacy comparable to frame relay or ATM. By using only private IP address space and private routing domains, MegaPath can ensure that your mission-critical traffic is segregated from any other enterprise or public Internet traffic.
• Performance - MegaPath's all-optical MPLS network uses labeled switched paths instead of traditional IP routing, so customer traffic traverses the network with minimal delay and packet loss. This is ideal for customers with performance-sensitive applications, such as VoIP and video conferencing.
• Flexibility - MegaPath's wide selection of access technologies and providers allows us to tailor a solution that best fits each site's specific bandwidth and redundancy requirements. We can also seamlessly integrate other site-to-site and remote access VPN and security services to tailor a solution that addresses all of your communication requirements.

How It Works

Network Performance Starts in the Core

As with any WAN solution, the strength of MegaPath's MPLS Private Network service starts with the underlying core network. MegaPath's all-optical MPLS network is engineered to out-perform all others. Redundant OCx links and a fault tolerant POP architecture ensure maximum uptime and reliability, and state-of-the-art MPLS routing technology delivers your data with exceptionally low latency and packet loss.

This advanced technology enables your data to traverse the entire network in a single "hop," eliminating the performance degradation and loss associated with memory-intensive routing decisions. MPLS routing creates a fully meshed network topology with multiple paths between any two sites (versus a hub-and-spoke topology) and automatically forwards your data via the optimal path. So, your traffic gets delivered fast without any bottlenecks or single points of failure. This makes MPLS ideal for supporting performance-sensitive applications, like VoIP and videoconferencing.

Protect Your Network with Built-in Security

MegaPath's Site-to-Site MPLS VPN is a completely private network. To provide access to the public Internet, you can route traffic through a firewall at your headquarters or through our Security Gateways. Of course, if you use your firewall, you not only have to purchase, install and manage it, but you also need T1 or DS3 Internet circuit(s). MegaPath's Security Gateways deliver a completed suite of Managed Security Services with 24x7 proactive monitoring and management plus Internet access for your entire network - all for considerably less and without any of the hassles of doing it yourself.

Extend the Reach of Your MPLS Network

In addition to dedicated T1/T3 access, the MegaPath MPLS Site-to-Site VPN service supports private DSL access via MegaPath's Network-to-Network Interconnects with all of the leading broadband access providers. Plus, MegaPath uses IPsec-to-MPLS integration to extend the reach of your MPLS VPN to sites connected over cable, DSL or customer-provided Internet access. This allows you to connect off-net business locations and partners, distributors, suppliers and customers who need access to your MPLS VPN. We do this by placing a VPN router at these locations and building an IPSec tunnel from that router to one of the Security Gateways in our network. The Security Gateway "maps" the traffic from the remote location to your MPLS VPN - so there's no need to buy a dedicated IPsec concentrator.

Prioritize Your Business Critical Applications

MegaPath Quality of Service (QoS) classifies and prioritizes your network traffic into as many as 5 classes of services. A typical design may include separate classes for real-time applications, such as Voice over IP (VoIP), mission and business-critical traffic, such as email applications, and data traffic for all other non-critical transactions. We enable QoS not only at the circuit level but also throughout the entire MegaPath MPLS network, preventing vital applications from failing due to network congestion and utilization spikes.

Separate traffic into as many as five Classes of Service:

• Real-time 1: For MegaPath's VoIP service and customer VoIP traffic
• Real-time 2: For customer video conferencing traffic
• Data 1: For mission-critical data, like financial transactions, credit card data, etc.
• Data 2: For enterprise applications like SAP, Oracle, video surveillance, etc.
• Data 3: For low priority traffic such as Internet web browsing, FTP, etc.

Designed for Your Network, Managed for Your Convenience

MegaPath uses a technical discovery process to determine which applications need to be prioritized and how to allocate bandwidth on your network. We configure routers at both ends of each access circuit accordingly to detect, mark and prioritize the different network flows.

By deploying QoS Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) routers, MegaPath enables QoS on "on-net" and "off-net" circuits. Traffic is prioritized through the MegaPath QoS functionality of our all-optical MPLS network. On-net circuits prioritize traffic bi-directionally between the CPE and the MegaPath network, while off-net circuits prioritize upstream traffic to mitigate issues associated with uplink congestion. MegaPath's QoS-enabled nationwide MPLS network allows for improved packet delivery while minimizing latency and jitter.

MegaPath's Site-to-Site MPLS VPN service can be combined with our complete suite of managed security services and Remote Access VPN to create a robust, reliable enterprise-wide solution.

How MegaPath MPLS VPNs compare to Frame Relay and IPsec VPNs

Features	DIY IPsec VPN	Frame Relay	Competitior's MPLS VPN	MegaPath MPLS VPN
Private circuits, not public Internet, for superior performance/reliability, easier troubleshooting and reduced risk of Internet-based attacks
Connection-based versus packet-forward routing for faster data delivery and better network management capabilities
Separate Classes-of-Service for Real-time (VoIP) and Business-Critical applications (ERP, Financial Transactions)
Fully Meshed versus Hub-and-Spoke network topology standard for lower latency
Scalable architecture and manageability to support growing businesses with dozens or even thousands of sites
Low Total Cost of Ownership due to low CapEx requirements and outsourced management and 24x7 monitoring and support
Wide selection of access techonolgies offered nationwide (DSL, Cable, Wireless, Satellite or T1/T3)
Built-in Security Gateways to provide Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-virus, Anti-Spam and Web Filtering
Data encryption optional; maximize security or increase throughput with low-cost CPE
IPsec or SSL VPN Remote Access for mobile workers/partners with application and device specific access control policies
Automatic Back-Up redundancy options featuring Dial, DSL, Cable, Wireless or Satellite access
End-to-End SLAs (Availability, MTTR, Latency, Packet Loss, Installation Intervals, etc.) on T1/T3, DSL and Cable access
4-hour Onsite CPE Maintenance with T1/T3, DSL, Cable and Satellite access
Multi-cast to broadcast video and distribute large files more quickly and with less host bandwidth/CPE cost
Multiple CPE options from Cisco, Adtran and Motorola to address feature/functionality and cost requirements
Flexibility to securely connect any site using its existing Internet access (Suppliers, Distributors, Customers, ASPs)