Simwood Carrier Ethernet is a high security, low latency means to connect sites or services either point-to-point or as a mesh. We use a number of technologies on top of our own VPLS/MPLS network to provide many of the features and functionalities of a LAN, or simply to provide high performance Internet access.
Simwood Carrier Ethernet enables the provision of multiple services such as voice, video and data provision over the same access circuit, bringing true convergence of triple play onto the WAN. We use Ethernet Demarcation Devices (EDDs) as standard so end-to-end QoS is achieved. This also allows for total physical separation of each service, maximising security.
Simwood Carrier Ethernet delivers a powerful and flexible Next Generation Network to enterprises and Service Providers using Simwood’s VPLS/MPLS core network. This core network acts as the ideal platform for converging Voice, Data and other services and creating services which can be delivered with simplicity, economy of scale, security, separation and quality of service.
Our Cloud
At the core of our Carrier Ethernet is the Simwood network. Whatever service we create for you, it will involve a connection to or through our network. This is where we add value and is the core of any proposition.
With PoPs in leading data centres in London, Manchester and Edinburgh we view our network as a spine down Britain, although in fact it is a redundant ring, and to you will appear as a cloud.
We run carrier-grade MPLS between our PoPs with redundant, traffic engineered paths across the network ensuring that traffic is delivered optimally and reliably. Our network was built for voice and video, two of the most quality sensitive types of traffic. Rather than offer MPLS based VPNs (a.k.a. IP-VPN, layer3 VPN) we build a further layer on top called VPLS. VPLS results in a layer 2 Ethernet service to you, rather than layer 3. It turns our network into a great big switch, with no routing and complete transparency. Because it is ethernet you can run any service or protocol across it that you might run across your LAN. Because it is ethernet, like your LAN, there is no learning curve or complexity involved in using it.
Each VPLS is completely separated across the Simwood network but you are not restricted to one. A given customer can have multiple VPLS to separate different types of traffic and any given site can belong to any/all of them. The different VPLSs are presented as separate VLANs to the customer - another instantly familiar concept made possible by using ethernet - or simply as distinct ports on the Ethernet Demarcation Device (EDD). Within each VPLS customers can also tunnel their own VLANs, rather like QinQ, to give total control and flexibility.
Whilst each VPLS is assigned a class of service for routing across the Simwood network, the customer can mark packets entering the cloud with up to 5 Class of Service indicators (CoS). These guarantee that important traffic such as voice and video take precedence over less critical traffic throughout the VPLS, enabling multiple applications to converge on one service.
Your connection
With your cloud(s) in place, you need to connect to them.
At its simplest this could be a cross-connect in one of our data-centres. If you’re an existing Simwood virtualisation or co-location customer this can be done very easily. If not, you can cable directly or using a Metro-LAN provider.
More often than not though at least one of the sites connecting to your VPLS will be ‘off-net’ and require a fibre access circuit. Here we work very differently to most and that benefits the customer:
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The national networks will only provide service from their own PoPs, or unbundled exchanges, using a BT circuit for the last mile; and because any service they offer is running on their network, all of your sites will require a circuit from them.
The result is a lock-in to a single network and where multiple sites are involved the guarantee that at least some of them will be sub-optimally priced and serviced. This is also true with resellers, even if they represent more than one network. As they have no means to bridge the service whilst may be able to offer solutions from more than one network, the entire solution will come from a single source.
Simwood differs in that we are able to procure your access from the breadth of the market, benefitting from the PoPs and LLU of multiple networks to reduce cost / improve delivery. These circuits access a uniform service on the Simwood network that in fact many of the networks cannot themselves provide. Access circuits will be installed by the most locally relevant network, delivering into your Simwood cloud in whichever of our PoPs make technical and commercial sense for the customer. Our value is added in that cloud and whilst we will be growing the coverage of the network we have no intention of digging up your street any time soon.
At each of your sites we will deploy an EDD. This is a device which extends our network monitoring right to your site. The device gives us back key network performance statistics and offers pro-active notifications of events such as power outages. It also replaces or complements your local network equipment in QoS and circuit separation, for example each port on the EDD can represent a separate VPLS and each of those can have defined QoS characteristics. This ensures our control of the service we deliver starts where we deliver it and there is no grey area in between your site and our network.
Finally, given we do not see access circuits as a core part of our value-add, Service Provider customers may wish to bring their own access and leverage their own network or Carrier relationships. In some cases these can be non-optical technologies such as DSL or EFM. The result is a high value proposition for customers playing to everyone’s strengths.
Simwood Carrier Ethernet Benefits
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Feature Benefit
Access circuits from the best provider, not the only provider Reduced cost, increased performance, independence Customer retains control of routing Improved agility & flexibility
Converge voice & data networks Reduced administration effort, easier network planning & lower cost
5 Levels of QoS prioritisation & bandwidth control Ensures that your voice, video & mission critical services always perform
Protocol transparent Ethernet Easy planning & administration
Bespoke design Solution tailored to meet your unique business
requirements
24x7 monitoring & fault management Fast, effective professional support
Industry leading SLA Guaranteed performance
No legacy revenue to protect Today’s technology at today’s price.
Core network built for VPLS You’re not funding past mal-investment.
Solution configurations
The potential for a multi-point to multi-point LAN-like WAN gives incredible flexibility. We actively avoid giving multiple product names to the different options and instead work with you to deliver Simwood Carrier Ethernet in a form that works for your requirement. However, there are a number of common elements that can be combined or form solutions on their own:
Point-to-Point
As the name suggests, a point-to-point circuit connects to distant points. These could be two of your sites, your office and data centre, or your Simwood virtualised network and your office. This can be thought of as a very long patch cable connecting the two - it is a clean ethernet pipe between two ports on the Simwood Network.
Quite often, there will be a single site connecting to the Simwood Network and the other end will be Simwood’s Internet service, enabling a high performance replacement for leased-lines or other complicated and copper based products.
The Metro Ethernet Foundation (MEF) define this service as ‘E-Line’ in order to give some commonality between the multiple names given to it by different providers.
Multi-point to Multi-point
This is your cloud in the sky, the VPLS service that much of this document has described. If you have multiple sites that wish to communicate as if they were on a single LAN, this enables it. As described above though, there can be multiple VPLS configured for a single customer enabling different combinations of multiple sites as represented by the different colours in the digram below.
The Metro Ethernet Foundation (MEF) define this service as ‘E-LAN’ in order to give some commonality between the multiple names given to it by different providers..
Point to Multi-point
This is a hybrid of the two and is relevant for both broadcast applications or Service Provider solutions. Essentially ‘root’ sites can access all ‘leaf’ sites but ‘leaf’ sites can only access the ‘root’ sites, i.e. ‘leaf’ to ‘leaf’ communication is not possible.
A use case for this might be a Service Provider wishing to provide high performance Internet access. Rather than configure a ‘point-to-point’ circuit for each customer with a distinct virtual gateway at his end, he configures a single gateway at the ‘root’ site and adds customers as ‘leaf’ sites.
This is also used for mobile backhaul and broadcast solutions. The Metro Ethernet Foundation (MEF) define this service as ‘E-Tree’ in order to give some commonality between the multiple names given to it by different providers.
Quality of service
In traditional networks, for each service delivered to a customer, a different technology approach was used that was specifically developed to support that service. For example voice services were carried over ATM networks whereas Frame Relay was designed to carry data.
Next Generation Network technology is all about using the same technology for all services, be it voice, video or data and being able to converge them all onto the same physical access circuit. This demands the ability to tune the performance of the network so that each service experiences different performance characteristics uniquely set to maximise quality of the particular service. This is no mean feat when you consider the conditions under which this has to be done, with each service just another stream of packets amongst all the others on the same connection. Without advanced Quality of Service tools to help, the only solution would be to
provide so much bandwidth on your WAN that no service would ever need to compete for resource from another – a very expensive ‘sledgehammer to crack a nut’ approach.
The first tool Simwood uses is the ability to create multiple virtual connections on a single physical connection which allows separate VLAN-style virtual circuits or mesh networks to be created either to separately support different organisational groups which have different service ‘bundles’ or to separate particular service types that have different quality, management or security requirements e.g. VoIP and data could run as separate VLAN networks and so maintain better security for both.
Within each circuit however, individual applications can mark traffic to control priority across the network. Simwood has carefully defined five QoS options to meet your business requirements:
Voice: This is engineered to provide MOS 4, toll quality voice regardless of data traffic levels.
Video: This is engineered to provide the optimum conditions for video conferencing and video streaming.
Critical: Highest priority data traffic for applications that require guaranteed bandwidth however busy the network may be. Priority: This is given priority over best effort services, ideal for line of business applications such as CRM and ERP. Normal: Best effort data traffic ideal for Internet browsing or email.
These QoS levels are defined and tuned to ensure that the key network performance criteria of bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss are set to optimise the performance needed by the service running at that QoS level. Naturally for a service this important to our customer’s business we offer SLA guarantees for the performance.
These QoS levels are so important to our customer’s ability to deliver the required network performance that we have made sure that this is not just available when the service travels across our core network, as is the case with most of our competitors. Instead it starts from the moment it begins its journey at a customer site and continues all the way to the point when it arrives at its destination. To achieve this, the customer sets their network to mark the traffic priority and this is acted on by the Simwood demarcation device at the customer site.
Why VPLS?
There appear to be dozens of different WAN solutions in the market-place but actually there are just two. The most commonly seen today is usually just referred to as ‘MPLS VPN’ but actually is a particular type known technically by the standard that defines its operation - ‘2547bis’. This type of WAN operates using layer 3 protocols whereas the Simwood WAN uses a different technical standard to deliver its service over the MPLS core that is known as Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS). The differences in the two approaches are shown below:
Attribute VPLS 2547bis / MPLS VPN / IP VPN
Enterprise protocol Multi-protocol IP only
WAN connectivity topology Multipoint bridged solution Multipoint routed solution
Routing responsibility The enterprise routes, Simwood switches
Shared. Provider imposes addressing and routing requirement on enterprise. Adding new sites Multipoint - new sites need only local
provider edge updates.
Multipoint - new sites need all provider edge routing tables updating.
Complexity of troubleshooting Low Higher, due to routing.
Need for protocol conversion from LAN to WAN
