MPLS over DSL from New Edge Networks

New Edge Networks will offer its managed network customers in April the ability to tag and prioritize data applications traffic over low-cost, high-speed digital subscriber lines commonly used for wide area networks. The move is a challenge to T1 services that sometimes are alternatives to business-class DSL services, and which can offer tagging and prioritization.

New Edge says it also will support tagging and traffic priorities end-to-end through private networks

Businesses in various industry segments can use up to five classes of service to tag and prioritize their applications so that critical services such as VoIP telephone calls or inventory and price lookups move across DSL-based networks ahead of email or other less important business functions.

Currently, traffic tagging and prioritization with class of service are available only on more costly high-capacity T1 lines with MPLS technology, short for Multi-Protocol Label Switching.

New Edge will honor DSL class-of-service tags end to end throughout its customers’ private wide area networks.

The move means enterprise branch offices and remote locations or smaller businesses that cannot justify a T1 line will be able to buy class of service features at a business DSL price.

A typical DSL connection used as part of a managed, private network costs about $150. Monthly costs for T1 lines range from about $500, depending on distance and geographic area.

Managed Security Shift: IPSec to SSL

border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085539964711321346" /> The managed security service market is forecast to more than double between 2006 and
2010, when it will reach $12.1 billion, says Jeff Wilson, Infonetics Research principal analyst. But the composition of sales is changing, with more security being embedded directly into the MPLS infrastructure, says Wilson.
The managed encrypted VPN service market inched up four percent between 2005 and 2006 to $20.5 billion, but is expected to decline in coming years, says Wilson. In 2006, 49 percent of security service revenue comes from managed firewall services, 27 percent from content security and 24 pecent from other security services.

By 2010, SSL VPNs will outpace IPSec VPNs.

“Security and performance are the top driving factors when respondents are trying to decide between IPSec and SSL for VPN use, and user experience is at the bottom of the list. Many IT managers think strong security and a good user experience are mutually exclusive. It’s up to vendors to show this isn’t really the case any more,” says Wilson, principal analyst for VPNs and security at Infonetics Research.

In the managed services space; 35 percent of respondents overall (46 percent of federal government respondents) think it's critical that their provider offer SSL VPN services, says Wilson.

“MPLS services are really starting to steal business away from encrypted VPNs. This is having a significant impact on spending for managed IPSec site-to-site VPNs, especially among large organizations, who are starting to migrate from complex self-managed IPSec VPNs to simpler carrier-managed MPLS services,” Wilson says.