Computer offer tailored WAN Services. We have the ability to package a product using more than one carrier that presents the overall solution your business needs. In addition, we can offer managed bandwidth, compression, acceleration, and content features such as Antispam, Firewalling or VPN. Features that are unavailable from traditional carriers.

We offer the transparency for you to access you own equipment, while we offering a management role and monitoring.

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WANS - Wide Area Network Discussion

What type - IPESEC v MPLS?
Considerations - What is Contention? What is Collision Avoidance? Why do all carriers think their solutions is the best?

WAN Connectivity Options

Broadly speaking, there are two types of Virtual Private Networks; IPSec (or Internet based VPNs) and Private Networks (Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks).

MPLS

Private networks create privacy from other traffic by header labels. Traffic for a particular label is read only by the carrier's Routers . Normal IP routing methods work in conjunction with the MPLS fabric -only the MPLS labels are read to deliver traffic between sites. This is equivalent to your own dedicated link.

IPSec VPNs (Public or Internet based VPNs)

IPSec VPNs have can be defined as encrypted tunnels over Layer 3 protocols. The encryption makes the addressing and data unreadable and, thus, private. The encrypted payload is placed in another packet that carries it across the network, upon arrival the encrypted packet is authenticated and unencrypted.

So - Which one?

There is no right or wrong choice between MPLS and IPSec VPNs. The choice of whether or not to use an MPLS or IPSec VPN is dependent upon your business needs.

Managing risks, controlling costs and providing flexibility and scalability are significant factors when deciding which way you should go. Best practices indicate companies can meet their site-to-site VPN business requirements with a combination of MPLS & IPSec VPN - e.g., the core networks is on MPLS, and the WAN connection points are firewalled with an UTM appliance that also serves as an IPSec gateway for roaming and remote users.

Question	Impact	MPLS	IPSEC
Where are you located?		It used to be that MPLS services needed to be within the same Country, We are seeing more requirements for Internationally based MPLS due to concerns primarily about security and Quality of Service.	IPSec tunnels are carrier independent and can be deployed to any customer located anywhere in the world with an Internet connection.
Do you have trained IT staff at your head and branch offices?	Apart from the actual cost of the network, consider ongoing administration time.	Low administration overhead, as ISP generally maintains the router and the configuration.	There is an additional management overhead of configuring, maintaining and managing IPSec tunnels. IPSec key distribution, key management and peering configuration need to be regularly maintained.
What are the factors you base your Total Cost of Ownership on?	Don't just consider monthly spend or upfront costs when making up your mind; clearly this is important, but not the only factor. Total Cost of ownership includes ongoing costs of links. While least-price Internet connectivity is a major consideration, a contended link without Service Levels may lead to unproductive staff and downtime.	Research indicates that companies who use their IT systems to gain a competitive edge measure factors like uptime, trouble tickets, application acceleration, latency etc. * Initial setup costs are lower than IPSec VPN. For instance, we would recommend a router with less memory, routing & firewalling capabilities for a Private Network. * In addition to the WAN costs, add an Internet connection. * There is a perception that Private networks have higher ongoing costs than IPSec Networks; however, this all depends on the service provider and your situation.	Both IPSec & MPLS TCO can be measured; again, it is how important factors of uptime, latency, packet loss etc is to your business that determines choices. * Initial setup costs are higher in hardware as well as configuration time. * Ongoing costs, apart from the Internet connections) to be considered are data downloads. You would have to pay for the traffic between sites which is sometimes not the case in Private networks. *Add the time required to maintain and troubleshoot the IPSec VPN tunnels
What would it mean to your business if your data is intercepted or attacked?	What concerns do you have with your data integrity, confidentiality and security? Companies with privacy concerns need to think about protecting confidential data e.g. - healthcare providers.	Data sent over an MPLS network is not travelling over the Internet and open to less risk.	A misconfigured firewall can open your IPSec VPN network to the Internet. Security is of even higher concern if you use split tunneling on your VPN concentrators. However, IPSec VPN tunnels protect the data that is traversing the WAN, because the data will be encrypted.
Do you have a number of branch offices?	Highly distributed sites indicate a need for meshed networks.	Consider MPLS for your network.	Complexity and hardware requirements grows as the number of sites grow.

Delivery Types

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Fibre	High speed - up to 1Gb if required Contention ratio - 1:1 Up time 99.999%	High cost to install limited coverage SLA – falls to forced Majere if failure occurs ie best effort
ADSL	Low cost install Proven technology Up time 99.99% SLA falls back to PSTN	Low speeds – 256/64, 512/128, 512/512 1500/256 Contention ratio – varies, depend son carrier could be up to 200:1
SDSL	Low cost install Proven technology Up time 99.99% SLA falls back to PSTN	High speeds –512/512 100/1000, 2000/2000 Contention ratio – varies, depend son carrier could be up to 50:1 Speeds dependent on distance from Exchange
Ethernet over Copper	Low cost install Proven technology based on SDSL Up time 99.99% SLA falls back to PSTN High speeds - bonded SDSL services	Contention ratio – low Speeds dependent on distance from Exchange Requires additional PSTN lines
ADSL 2+	Low cost install Proven technology Up time 99.99% SLA falls back to PSTN	High Speed –up to 24mbps downstream 2000/upstream Contention ratio – varies, depend son carrier could be up to 50:1 Speeds dependent on distance from Exchange

KEY FEATURES

Combine Mutiple Vendors
Customised to your needs
Self Managed or Managed