Metro Ethernet or MPLS - Which is the best choice for your WAN (Wide Area Network)?

If you could choose only one technology for Wide Area Network .... Metro Ethernet or MPLS .... which would you choose and why?

Keep in mind this is not a simple question of bandwidth. As the choice of "how" .... between bandwidth say DS3 or OC3 bandwidth. This goes to the heart of designing the network infrastructure.

First of all ..... you must understand that not mutually exclusive. I would use Metro Ethernet as an access technology .... and Layer-3 technology, such as MPLS, for my spine. The appeal of MPLS is the Quality of Service (QoS) offering.

The bottom line when choosing a WAN technology is the price of the capacity of bandwidth and redundancy. Service providers offer several flavors of similar technologies, so unless you have the specs, its hard to compare.

Be aware that when you offer WAN services to a remote site, you will always rely on a support of the local exchange (LEC) to deliver the "last mile" services. Most of the problems with the WAN circuit outages at the remote offices are problems at the physical level to a CO that is the responsibility of the LEC. This is particularly important if you need to provide services in a city or rural area, with a dated infrastructure. This seller about appropriate screening may actually be more important than technology.

In fact, these are not necessarily mutually exclusive - there are technologies such as VPLS, which is a version of MPLS Metro Ethernet. The number one factor is what you need? They are all sites that require this connectivity within a metropolitan area and there is one supplier that provides Ethernet access to all these positions? If the answer is "no", then the choice is clear - MPLS, which is fairly ubiquitous these days.

MPLS is more appropriate for a diverse network with connection speeds of multiple and diverse stakeholders, especially in situations where you're trying to achieve CBR. Metro Ethernet is best used in more than a "bridge" (I use the term loosely!) Situation, physically connecting separate offices in which everyone is engaged in similar work, or at least work for the same division. The reality, of course, is that a typical system is made up of Metro Ethernet interconnect and an MPLS backbone, but I said "one click".

From my point of view would be MPLS, only for the flexibility of the methods of access and transport support, scalability of bandwidth demands, and, of course, the QoS and the ability to prioritize traffic. Also in this case, the use of MPLS does not preclude the MEN, but MPLS would be my choice general, if pushed.

In summary, unfortunately, many questions as computer networks, the answer is "It depends" .......