Definitive MPLS Network Designs (paperback) (Networking Technology)

Excellent study reference for CCIE SP, CCDE, CCAr, or just general service provider architecture. The case studies are very well thought out and verbosely described. This is the kind of book one would use to compare different SP architectures objectively and based on business requirements.

Great overview of MPLS, good way to study, recommended read for anyone interested in understanding more about scaling large networks.

Why is MPLS being implemented so widely? To get your arms around this, you need to divide the question somewhat, and take a look at the different flavors of service providers and carriers that are building MPLS networks. In Definitive MPLS Network Designs, the authors have created strawmen for an Interexchange Carrier (USCom), a National Telco (Telecom Kingland), a Global Service Provider (Globenet), and a monstrously large enterprise (EuroBank-which seems to have swallowed up so many other European banks as to be a kind of virtual service provider in its own right). All four of these mythical entities build Layer 3 MPLS services, but they each have different requirements for QoS, restoration, traffic engineering, and other services provided by MPLS. USCom is a long distance voice service provider who needs very fast (telco quality) recovery over unprotected core transport. Telecom Kingland is adding a multiservice backbone that will be trunking public telephony as well as new services such as IPv6 and carrier of carrier services (in which all VPNs from one carrier are trunked in a single VPN across another carrier's backbone). GlobeNet has unique traffic engineering concerns and a need to create viable peering agreements with local service providers in order to provide services in a shared fashion. Thus, inter-AS Layer 3 VPNs are discussed in detail here. EuroBank, with its vast resources, is building out its own MPLS core to support the variety of access infrastructures it has inherited. Each of these strawmen are described in terms of their design objectives, the services they offer, their topologies, and the constraints that lead to the choices made in building out these networks. Configuration snippets are provided throughout for illustration purposes. The problem that this book solves is that there really is no one-size-fits-all design for any network technology, and MPLS is no exception. The set of services offered by network operators and enterprises vary greatly from one implementation to the next, and the best you can do is try to scaffold a set of likely use cases and thus provide a starting point for the network designers and engineers that have to take on unique project. These case studies all validate the reasons that MPLS has emerged as a way to give you the simplicity and power of Layer 3 networks and still retain everything you loved about your last generation Layer 2 Frame Relay or ATM network-the per-subscriber separation of virtual circuits, robustness against attacks, and the virtualization of the core infrastructure. The real sale in terms of manageability is the ability to maintain only a single converged network instead of many disparate networks. Initially it was the traffic separation capabilities in the form of Layer 3 VPNs that put MPLS on the way to wide acceptance, but with the growth of multimedia traffic and the trends towards advanced network services, the demand for resiliency, restoration and traffic engineering on a scale more commonly associated with optical transport has provided another wide area for MPLS to show its strengths. Chances are that any network engineer responsible for turning up or maintaining an MPLS network is only going to be responsible for a network resembling one of the reference designs illustrated in this book. But it is well worth browsing all the different implementations to get an idea of the power of MPLS to fit into these different models. Finally, what really drives this book to 5 stars is the comprehensive technology primers it provides before even getting into the case studies. The first chapter is more edge-oriented and provides an excellent backgrounder on MPLS VPN services, as well as multicast, IPv6, and pseudowire. Chapter 2 covers core issues such as the many varieties of MPLS traffic engineering and QoS facilities. These chapters give you most of the hooks you need to hang onto the concepts that are introduced in the case studies, and they provide nice reference material in general to get a feel for these technologies before you go digging through the documentation for implementation specifics.

Your organization has grown and the simple wide area network (WAN) you are responsible for and familiar with needs to grow to support the needs of that change. Now the WAN is preparing to enter the next generation technology and expand from either a simple point to point and point to multipoint environment to a global diverse cloud environment and you are tasked to learn about this new technology and implement it. Most likely you are in the networking team and/or the architecture group within your organization and it is your job to do this and do it right the first time. The amount of information on new WAN technologies is enormous and ever growing. As anyone in the network world knows various providers will have their solutions and offer numerous products and options, but it will be your job to understand these solutions and advise your management team on the best options available. Thus, you will need to learn and refer to items at various intervals. One of the newer technologies that is gaining strength in the WAN environment is Multiprotocol Label Switching or MPLS and could be the ideal solution for you. With "Definitive MPLS Network Design" you will be able to take the first important step to accomplishing this goal and ensuring that the process and planning is accomplished correctly. When I first looked at this book, I assumed it was nothing more than an enhancement to the concepts of Frame-Relay and point to point connections, but as I ventured further into the book the inclusion of IPv6 information and Network Engineering items proved my initial assumptions where not only incorrect but extremely off base. This book will not only provide the first step, but also provides the guidance and hand holding to help you navigate the land of uncertainty that is MPLS. As you start reading about MPLS, you will discover that it is a different type of Wide Area Networking. It is a entirely new concept -- no more leased T1 lines or frame relay clouds, now the concept of point to multipoint and beyond take on an entirely different meaning and theory. Jim Guichard and his fellow authors, Francois Le Faucheur and Jean-Philippe Vasseur, define not only the concepts like PE (Provider Router) and CE (Client Router) but detail step by step the assembly of the cloud that will be needed to ensure a complete implementation of any MPLS solution. Included are numerous routing features of items like BGP and EIGRP, as well as, features like QoS and multicasting play important parts in the environment that an individual would be building. They further explain the need for interchange between the user environment and the provider environment and the different routing features and procedures that could affect this switch. Within the book, other topics like HSRP and IPv6 are included and detailed. Within only six chapters, the amount of detail and design helps any individual with the basic understanding of WAN technologies optimize and deploy the needed environment. They say books and real-life meet and sometimes relate, well the timing of this book not only offered a great opportunity to gain further knowledge, but also assistance as I began to deploy and support an MPLS solution for a nationwide project within my organization. The amount of detailed information in the book ensured that all sides of the architecture and design process were covered; thereby, allowing me to deliver and meet the needs of my environment The only way both Guichard and Cisco Press could have enhanced this material would have been to include a glossary for a quick reference to the book. Yet even with this, I believe that once again Cisco Press has made available through their large pool of authors a combination of high-end and well-developed material that I believe will help any individual. This book is not only an excellent item for any network individual's library, but should be on the quick grab shelf for many having to understand and support MPLS.

This was my very first structural learning resource of MPLS, purchased way back in 2005, 2 years before my CCIE. I must read it again now, even after 12 years later.

Most network design books focus on how to do that task. Definitive MPLS takes a different route. It provides the basics of how Multiprotocol Label Switching Works and delivers for the bulk of the book a series of hypothetical examples to demonstrate the flexibility of MPLS. If one of these examples comes close to what you do, you'll find the book a lot more valuable than if all the examples are somewhat remote to your application. I found this to be a peculiar way to assemble such a book. The examples are: 1. An interexchange carrier that provides data and long-distance services throughout the U.S. including LATA services and 31 flavors of data services. The example is based on a fictitious company that owns its fiber and transmission facilities as Layer 2 switching infrastructure (ATM and Frame Relay). 2. Another fictitious company is a telco that operates an ISP in addition to being an existing telecom provider in Asia or Europe. 3. The next fictitious example operates in more than 60 countries serving medium and large international companies, and is using virtual POPs based on co-location of some routers in regional service providers' premises. 4. The final example is a fictitious European bank holding company originally based in the UK that has expanded into a multi-continent organization with insurance and brokerage operations. The organization wants to keep the flexibility to quickly add other acquired financial institutions to its base. The first two chapters provide about a hundred pages on the basics of MPLS. I found it easy to follow, and I'm not an engineer nor a software professional. For those with advanced questions, this material in fact may be a little too simple. I would have liked the book a lot better if it had dealt more with a process for making design decisions rather than providing so many cases.

This book cuts through the hype surrounding MPLS and gets to the core of the subject. Readers can confidently expect to gain a broad yet detailed overview of this extremely important topic without needing to read other books and RFCs. It presents a one-stop-shop showing how MPLS is being deployed today in real networks of various sizes. What interested me about the book is the way Cisco has fashioned its technology in such a way that it can replace the legacy technologies. If you want to see the direction of network technology, then read this book!

Very high-end book — carrier grade networking. Great addition to my knowledge base.

Exactly as expected