Storm, one of the country's fastest growing independent voice and data service providers, is one of the first ISP's in South Africa to implement MPLS technology in a bid to increase its network performance and ultimately enhance customer productivity.
"MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching technology is still relatively new technology that is not widely deployed in the market currently," says Lex van Wyk, General Manager of Storm. Van Wyk explains that MPLS is at the core of the Storm network. "It is a superior technology that enables us to manage our network more efficiently, and to better our service to customers."
Storm, which is at the forefront of development of leading edge technology such as Voice over IP, invested six months of intensive planning prior to the introduction and roll-out of MPLS technology across its network.
Says Steve Midgley, director of Cisco Systems South Africa, "We have seen many carriers in Europe move towards offering multiple services over a converged backbone. The goal is to be able to roll out services faster and more cost effectively - thus ensuring customer satisfaction. MPLS is the key enabling technology for creating converged backbone services and, to this end, Storm is well in line with international trends."
Van Wyk says, "In a nutshell, MPLS ensures a smarter way of managing a network by speeding up traffic flow and prioritising network applications such as voice, data and video, allowing for better network management and higher quality transmission," Van Wyk says.
As a licensed Value Added Network provider, Storm is prohibited from allowing its customers to run VoIP over its network. However, with the widely publicised and approaching introduction of new legislation, Storm's business customers are already looking to implement this technology which will allow them to move swiftly, once these restrictions are lifted.
Customers who typically benefit from MPLS include companies which share a network, companies which make use of multi-branch, inter-office networks, or those which use centralised CRM and financial systems.
MPLS therefore holds major advantages for customers who need a secure and reliable Virtual Private Network connection to other branches or remote employees, without the costly hassle of managing the complexity of that network themselves.
Van Wyk explains, "Instead of making use of standard Internet connectivity with its security issues or costly leased line facilities, Storm will build a dedicated network for the customer on the back of the MPLS technology in our network. The technology provides complete isolation from other clients while sharing the same physical connection," Van Wyk says.
"We will allocate the customer's bandwidth according to the types or classes of traffic that have been identified, with the most important class of traffic being reserved for VoIP and real time applications," Van Wyk continues. The different types of traffic are being classified as first, business or economy class traffic.
Another major advantage is that MPLS allows the support of duplicate IP addressing structures from the customers' side. This means customers won't have the hassle of having to change IP addresses. Van Wyk explains that this can be compared to having one's telephone number changed when changing telecommunication service providers.
Although fairly complicated at the core of the network, MPLS technology is relatively simple to install at the customer site, with no added cost to customers. It runs on the back of most standard equipment, and no additional support skills are required from the customer's perspective.
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