[c-nsp] ATOM Basic Question

[Yasser Aly]

Oli,

  You said " Replacing a legacy Frame-relay L2 service by ATOM ". What
advantages for the provider/customer to use ATOM versus the legacy
Frame-Relay L2 service?

  I keep wondering about this because sometimes I think that keep providing
isolated L2 services like Frame-Relay is more secure and reliable than
offering it via MPLS.

 My company runs both services BTW ( MPLS-VPNs and L2 VPNs ), the argument
though is whether to switch all services to be over MPLS or keep platforms
separated as it is for now.

Your thoughts about practical implementations/advantages are highly
appreciated.

Yasser 

-----Original Message-----
From: Oliver Boehmer (oboehmer) [mailto:oboehmer at cisco.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 2:44 PM
To: Yasser Aly; cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: RE: [c-nsp] ATOM Basic Question



> 
>   With MPLS-VPN the provider is involved in the customer routing. 
> That's to say the CE next hop is the PE router of the
provider.
> 
>    Now, if I am having a customer where he is having Frame-Relay L2 
> service.
> The provider role here is on L2 level only and L3 is done between 
> customer router only. Now if I am interested to offer ATOM
such that
> the customer is still getting from me Frame-Relay service and it is
carried
> over the MPLS backbone. What will be the next-hop for the customer?
Will it be the
> provider PE router - like the case of MPLS-VPN -, or the Provider
routers
> will be totally transparent for the customer and the customer next-hop 
> will be his other branch ?

With ATOM, the MPLS network is (more or less) transparent, 100% transparent
from a Layer3 perspective.. I say "more or less" because some some L2 stuff
like OAM for ATM is performed on the PE.. for example you can basically
replace a legacy Frame-relay L2 service by ATOM..

	oli