A WAN is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries [1]). Or less formally a network that uses routers and public communication links [1]. Contrast with personal area networks (PANs), local area networks (LANs), campus area networks (CANs), or metropolitan area networks (MANs) that are usually limited to a room, building, campus or specific metropolitan area (e.g., a city) respectively. The largest and most well known example of this type of networking is the Internet or the World Wide Web.
WANs are used to connect LANs and other types of networking systems together, so that users and computers in one location can communicate with users and computers in other locations. Many WANs are built for one particular organization and are private to that organization.
Others, built by Internet service providers, provide connections from an organization's LAN to the Internet. WANs are often built using leased lines from a carrier such as AT&T, Verizon, BT, etc. At each end of the leased line, a router connects to the LAN (local area network) on one side and a hub within the WAN on the other. Leased lines or circuits can be very expensive. Instead of using leased lines, WANs can also be built using less costly circuit switching or packet switching methods.
Network protocols including TCP/IP deliver transport and addressing functions. Protocols including Packet over SONET/SDH, MPLS, ATM and Frame relays are often used by service providers to deliver the circuits that are used in WANs. X.25 was an important early WANSACHMO protocol, and is often considered to be the "grandfather" of Frame Relay as many of the underlying protocols and functions of X.25 are still in use today (with upgrades) by Frame Relay.
Wikipedia definition of MPLS: In computer networking and telecommunications, Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a data-carrying mechanism that belongs to the family of packet-switched networks. MPLS operates at an OSI Model layer that is generally considered to lie between traditional definitions of Layer 2 (data link layer) and Layer 3 (network layer), and thus is often referred to as a "Layer 2.5" protocol. It was designed to provide a unified data-carrying service for both circuit-based clients and packet-switching clients that provide a datagram service model. It can be used to carry many different kinds of traffic, including IP packets, as well as native ATM, SONET, and Ethernet frames.
MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching is an IETF–defined protocol that is used in IP traffic management. Basically, it provides a means for one router to pass on its routing priorities to another router by means of a label and without having to examine the packet and its header, thus saving the time required for the latter device to look up the address for the next node. It can also facilitate Quality of Service (QoS). QoS provides some guarantee of performance such as traffic delivery priority, speed, latency, or latency variation. Delivery of good-quality audio or video streams typically requires QoS capabilities. Now that the MPLS technology and networking systems have matured from their initial release approximately 3 years ago, it has become a very cost effective solution to replace existing frame relay and Internet based VPN networks.
The cost of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and video conferencing continues to drop and is becoming more affordable for even small businesses. MPLS creates a perfect fit to enable mission critical applications such as VoIP to run across the enterprise with the reliability. QoS (Quality of Service) inherent with the MPLS Network ensures the delivery of latency sensitive protocols such as VoIP and Citrix etc.
Now enterprises can begin to take full advantage of these applications with piece of mind MPLS offers many advantages over existing Wide Area Networking technologies. Listed below are many of the key reasons why MPLS is fast becoming the Wide Area Networking technology of choice.
For these reasons, many businesses are quickly embracing MPLS as the WAN technology of choice. The flexibility and simplicity of the MPLS WANs allows the IT staff to focus on projects that increase productivity and the bottom line.
Ok, well it sounds interesting but I think we need to dive into this definition in more detail to truly understand what this means and how it effects you. As you already know, wide area networks are generally extremely slow links (compared to LAN speeds) and connections that interconnect branch offices, vendors, partners as well as mobile workers and telecommunters. Even with bandwidth costs dropping on a daily basis, these links and connections are extremely expensive.
As corporate applications become more and more critical to the survival and growth of the business' bottom line, IT departments face tough decisions about how to deliver more applications with better performance to all of the end users across the wide area networked system. These concerns have slowly grown to be huge challenges for IT managers and directors over the past 2 years. This is why WAN optimization and application acceleration is so critical to the future of wide area networks.
In the past, the myth that "ordering more bandwidth will solve my problems" was the general response when a business was facing slow application performance across the wide area networked system. This response was due in part because there were limited options for IT staff to try and improve application performance without increasing bandwidth. This problem has created the opportunity for someone to develop an alternative solution to improve application performance and enhance the use of the current WAN bandwidth without increasing bandwidth.
For more information on WANs or MPLS or WAN Acceleration solutions or if you would like to evaluate Riverbed's WAN optimizers in your production environment free of charge, contact us.
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