RE: MPLS VPNs or not?

["Kavi, Prabhu" <prabhu_kavi () tenornetworks com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Loch [mailto:kloch () opnsys com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 1:53 PM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Re: MPLS VPNs or not?

> Diddn't PSInet deploy L2 switching massively throughout their network?
> What did the market decide about that?  Could it be that 
> UUNet's success
> was due to other factors?  BTW, I'm not sure that #1 above 
> was ever true
> in a large scale network.
>
> KL

Like I said, to be succesful, you need to do many things right.  
And one of them having a sufficiently good sales team and
market presence that you run into the problem where you have
to scale your network rapidly to meet customer demand.  UUNET
had that problem (a good problem to have), tried a solution,
and it worked for them.  PSINet did not have this problem of
outrunning L3 routers.

#1 (running out of gas on the routers) was most definitely a problem
at the time for a few providers.  Remember that the most stable and 
widely deployed router in 1994-1997 could do about 300Kpps across the
entire box.  We've just come a long way since then.

Prabhu