MPLS 2009 – Day 3 Report

 

Another day, another pile of great information.  I am still trying to sort through it all.  Today’s topics were MPLS-TP, Multicast, Mobility, and Experience.

The MPLS-TP section was kicked off by Loa Andersson from Ericsson.  He gave a standards update and discussed how the MPLS-TP specifications are actually being worked through quite quickly. He estimated that if there are no drastic changes, the specs should be completed mid-2011.

Luyuan Fang from cisco gave us some more justification for why we need MPLS-TP.   She is my new idol…she’s a great presenter, very knowledgeable, and she’s a nice person  – I wish she was giving all the sessions.  Some of the key points she made:  the reason for MPLS-TP is that is works with existing MPLS which leverages expertise and technologies; it provides a packet-based transport with features similar to existing circuit-based transport.  She also described some of the applications where MPLS-TP can be used. 

The next set of sessions were concerning multicast, but unfortunately they were more focused on the path computations used for multicast.  It has been a while since I have felt this dumb, but the terms and acronyms the presenters were tossing around went right over my head most of the time.  I am sure someone cares about how the best path and backup paths are computed, but it’s not me.  Just give me the output and show me what the network does with it.  Sorry…

The afternoon started with the extremely hot topic of mobility.  The speakers took different approaches to their sessions which made it more interesting.  One of the most interesting topics that I thought would be the biggest bore was the discussion on timing requirements for the mobile base stations.  Peter Roberts from Alcatel-Lucent did a great job with this session.  I never realized just how big a challenge this is, because not only do we need bit synchronization, but in the wireless world you need phase synchronization and time-of-day.  He explained the challenges that are being overcome with timing over packet – one of the biggest is having symmetric delays. 

Other discussions centered around Ethernet vs. MPLS-TP in the backhaul.   Pasula Reddy from Fujitsu spoke about the different motivations of the mobile provider and the backhaul provider (assuming they are not the same organization.  Esmael Dinan from Clearwire discussed their implementation for backhaul and some of the other options.  They are using microwave for their LTE implementation and straight Ethernet backhaul to an MPLS core.  The other option of course is running MPLS-TP across the backhaul network.  He said that because their microwave equipment supported native Ethernet, this was the most cost effective choice for their implementation.

The second part of the afternoon featured speakers from the providers who have real-world experience testing and implementing this.  Deutsche Telecom and Reliance Globalcom explained their strategies and implementations, then cisco gave a presentation on VPN services over DOCSIS.

The wrap up for the day was a vendor panel moderated by Dave McDysan from Verizon.  Representatives from Brocade, Cisco, Juniper, Ericsson, ALU, and IPInfusion all participated and answered questions on technology trends, standards compliance, and interoperability issues.

Another great day.  One more day then I will have a whole year to digest this stuff until 2010.