ExtendedMPLS is a technology which removes the “Risk” of disruption to key applications when application class saturation occurs. In MPLS you have multiple classes of varying priorities ranging from High priority (for latency sensitive applications) down to Best effort (For applications which are not as important). At purchase point of an MPLS service you specify how much bandwidth you wish to have in each class. The high priority obviously costs a lot more than the lower classes. You can also ask for a burst facility which is used when the high priority class is full, a bit like an Insurance policy. Trouble is this is also expensive and who can say when and how big peaks of traffic are.

So what happens when say the high priority class gets full? Well the Mpls service will indiscriminately move the additional packets into either a lower priority class, drop them completely or the router buffers fill. The MPLS backbone is not application aware. Basically latency is introduced and you have no control over which applications this occurs on. Even if you used a product from one of our competitors who can give granularity into which application/session goes into which class, they are not able to then prioritise which session/application would be relegated into a lower priority class. Fundamentally they do not mark, track the throughput into each class and remark the actual packets when classes are about to reach saturation.

What Opteq does with ExtendedMPLS is provide actually the same as competitors, i.e. ability to do deep packet inspection and assign sessions/applications/users etc. into the correct classes PLUS…. We mark/track all traffic over MPLS and can see when saturation is about to occur and then make decisions on which of the high priority sessions/applications/users etc. can afford to be moved into a lower priority class. Also visa versa we can move traffic from a lower priority to a higher priority class if there is available bandwidth. And we can do such that the policies/rules of who/what moves where is varies at different times of the day/week/month etc.

So what does this mean to a potential customer?

1. You can reduce your costs on MPLS service procurement by not needing to purchase extra bandwidth in the high priority class. No need to purchase extra burst facility neither.
   
2. You will make much better use of the full bandwidth available as Opteq will move traffic reaching saturation point between classes at any time given our knowledge of the limits of each class
   
3. Most importantly, it removes the risk of impact to a critical application when saturation occurs during traffic peaks. Effectively you can now guarantee application availability 99.999%.
   

No one else can do that.  

Read more about ExtendedMPLS and how it will help you.