Network transformation doesn’t have to be hard, expensive, or immediate
You may be feeling the pressure to update your network – IoT, 5G, SaaS, hybrid clouds, AI, remote work – they’re all forcing a reckoning: can my network handle it all? The dizzying pace of technological and cultural transformation is challenging networks to keep up. The good news is that you don’t need to do it all at once. Your WAN, with a solid, seamless, step-by-step upgrade plan, will handle your new business environment brilliantly.
Keep that powerhouse WAN – your MPLS foundation
Your current WAN likely runs over your carrier’s MPLS backbone network. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a mature networking technology that’s still popular because it does a lot of heavy lifting, with a bit of intelligence thrown in. MPLS encapsulates and transports customer data across a service provider backbone network in a segregated and high-performance manner. It maintains traffic performance and privacy by assigning labels to uniquely identify different types of traffic, including – for example – traffic belonging to different customers.
This labeling system bypasses the need to fully scan packets, increasing its efficiency and speeds up the flow of network traffic. The labeling also enables network administrators to establish Quality of Service (QoS) characteristics, with which they can prioritize applications and allocate bandwidth accordingly.
MPLS is the underlying transport for many networking services, such as IP VPN (or Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networking). IP VPN operates at Layer 3 – the IP networking layer.
IP VPN – bringing the power of MPLS to life… still!
IP VPN is used by many service providers to provide fully managed Wide Area Networks (WANs) for enterprise customers. In some cases, IP VPN is provided with fully managed routers on customer premises. IP VPN uses MPLS to carry multiple services down one circuit. Real-time applications such as voice over IP (VoIP), Unified Communications, video conferencing, and business-critical applications receive special support on an IP VPN.
Although IP VPN is a mature technology now entering its second decade, its proven reliability has continued to fuel its adoption. Business Wire estimates that globally, IP VPN is projected to grow by 15.3% to reach US$77.1 billion by the end of 2026. The continued need for secure and multi-site connectivity, increasing cloud migration, and a new culture of remote work, all create steady demand for MPLS VPN solutions.
Zayo is fully committed to this technology and offers Zayo IP VPN, a Layer 3 any-to-any network solution that utilizes an underlying MPLS core network. Within the MPLS network, we create a virtual router with unique and private routing instances and tables which securely separate customer traffic. We offer customers a global WAN solution with international connectivity on our wholly owned fiber network.
As your WAN transforms: Enter AI, automation, and self-healing with SD-WAN
True WAN transformation goes all the way from the LAN to the cloud. SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN – an overlay – that facilitates resilient site connectivity and application aware routing, ensuring that your mission-critical applications stay working. While MPLS and IP VPN concern themselves with technical specs and traffic types, SD-WAN concerns itself with application performance and business outcomes.
At Zayo we understand that businesses sometimes need more (and IT departments need a break from fire fighting). We also know that implementing this can be challenging, which is why we use automation and AI to deploy complex solutions at scale. For us, “at scale” means deploying thousands of sites in days. We then holistically manage those solutions end-to-end.
Zayo is in a unique position to offer our customers a wholly-owned, foundational IP VPN and Tier 1 Dedicated Access (DIA) – alone or to support SD-WAN. Customers have the flexibility to use either, or both, networks to support their SD-WAN. And when your SD-WAN provider is your underlying WAN provider as well, we can streamline operations, diagnose and fix issues quickly, provide SLAs with teeth, and basically handle every network hiccup ourselves, even for the network events caused by your other carriers. SD-WAN removes the noise from IT management – allowing customers the ability to turn to the IT projects important to them.