[j-nsp] Separate internet transit network versus converged

[Mark Tinka]

On 27/Mar/16 01:46, Mark Tees wrote:

> My gut feeling is that the safer option is to run things separately
> but I also do not wish to create an administrative nightmare for other
> people to work on the network.
>
> Any input, experience, or additional points would be greatly appreciated.

I recall in the early days of MPLS (and specifically, l3vpn's), carriers
ran separate hardware for l3vpn's from that carrying Internet traffic.

As costs and management got out of control, they run l3vpn's and
Internet in the same chassis, but on different line cards.

Eventually, everything converged.

Are we seeing in interest in going back to separate hardware for l3vpn's
and Internet? Not sure, but your interest in this is certainly piquing mine.

We run a "converged" network. The only time where I've felt that
services need to be physically separate is for BNG. As much as I'd like
to run both my BNG and business services/Internet on the same edge
router, the velocity of feature movements in the BNG space just don't
make it feasible.

I think separating your services on a hardware basis will be costly in
money and human time terms, but you know your network better than I do.
What will be telling is whether you are able to maintain this
structure/policy as your network grows, i.e., you or the business are
never tempted to re-use a network for the function the other network was
designed for, due to resource constraints, time constraints, financial
constraints, convenience constraints, e.t.c.

Mark.