Voice and Video on MPLS Network

Pain Area and aspects for consideration:

• Which Topology suits for their existing Infrastructure?
• Difference between HUB and Spoke or Mesh Topology.
• Which routing protocol between CE-PE used for their requirement.
• How can Voice travel on MPLS Network?
• How can Video travel on MPLS Network?
• What type of VC equipment suits?
• Why MCU is required for Video conference?
• What type of QOS is required for their application?

- Solution Proposed

While running MPLS Network either HUB and Spoke or Mesh Topology customer can experience Voice and Video traffic as well on the same MPLS Bandwidth. In MPLS VPN, ISP could priorities the customer traffic as per their requirement through QOS (Quality of Service) feature in MPLS Technology. Voice call between all the locations though Customer’s MPLS network is FOC and customer can avoid local/std calls bills which is also a huge cost saving through MPLS network + Customer can have VC in between all the locations to avoid travelling which is also a very huge expense for some the organizations. Voice and Video traffic always be in a high priority in MPLS Network because of delay and jitter will hamper the quality which effects bad experience. If customer wanted to have a voice call in between all the location, first customer should opt for MESH Topology in WAN network and 2^nd place IP Phones into LAN network or put Voice gateway card with analog phones into existing PBX. If customer wanted to have a Video Conference one to one in between all the location, first customer should opt for MESH Topology in WAN network and 2^nd place video conference equipment with LCD/LED Display at every location. There are 2 types of VC equipment in the market are – SD-standard definition which consume 512 kbps bandwidth including over heads and HD-High definition equipment which consume 1024 kbps bandwidth including over heads. If customer wanted to have a Video Conference one 2 many in between their location, first customer should opt for Hub and Spoke Topology in WAN network, 2^nd place VC equipment with multi-party license at hub location or place MCU (Multi-party Conference Unit) at HUB location. Since MCU equipment is too expensive, so most of the customer opt license based VC or use service provider’s multi-party services pay per use model.

Every Customer has separate VRF in MPLS Cloud and all the Customer locations exchange their Routing information in that particular VRF, so any customer can use same set of IP address into their network and IP would not clash each other because of different VRF for every customer. Service provider Configure RD and RT values Export/Import into Customer VRF so that every spoke can speak to their respective HUB location.

- Technical Arrangements

1. Customers either choose HUB and Spoke or Mesh Topology according to their business requirement.
2. QOS- Quality of Services – Priorities the traffic according to the applications on MPLS Network.
3. IP Phone or Analog phone with Gateway Card behind CE Router.
4. MCU is required to set up Multi-party VC between all the locations.
5. Any CE Router with 1 Layer3 port with 1 Layer2 port.
6.   RUN Static or BGP Routing protocol between CE-PE.