More and more businesses with multiple locations are looking to migrate from frame relay or point to point circuits to Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and in the process increase their bandwidth and save in terms of overall cost. According to Search Telecom, MPLS is "a standards-approved technology for speeding up network traffic flow and making it easier to manage. MPLS involves setting up a specific path for a given sequence of packets, identified by a label put in each packet, thus saving the time needed for a router to look up the address to the next node to forward the packet to. MPLS is called multiprotocol because it works with the Internet Protocol (IP), Asynchronous Transport Mode (ATM), and frame relay network protocols. In addition to moving traffic faster overall, MPLS makes it easy to manage a network for quality of service (QoS) and MPLS has different types of class of service (CoS).

There are several main reasons more businesses are migrating to MPLS

1. Cost savings - Depending on the types of applications, and network configurations, MPLS services can reduce costs by up to 25% over comparable data services (frame relay, point to point T1 or point to point T3/DS3 and ATM). As companies add voice (VOIP - voice over internet protocol) and video traffic (video/web conferencing), cost savings can rise to as much as 40%.

2. QOS/CoS enablement - One of the main benefits of MPLS networks is the ability to support QoS/CoS, important for companies that run VOIP, videoconferencing, ERP, CRM, etc.

3. Improve performance - Because of the nature of MPLS services, network designers can reduce the number of “hops” between network points, which directly increases response times and improves application performance.

4. Disaster recovery - MPLS-based services enable disaster recovery efficiencies in a variety of ways. First, data centers and other key sites can be connected in multiple redundant ways (and thus to other sites on the network). Second, remote sites can quickly and easily reconnect to backup locations if needed (unlike with ATM and frame relay networks, in which either switched or backup permanent-virtual-circuits are required). "Flexibility for business recovery” is one of the biggest advantages for MPLS rollouts for multi-location corporations keeping in mind the importance of choosing the right MPLS providers.

5. Protect the network - Most companies are realizing that MPLS solutions represent “the wave of the future.” Investment in legacy WAN services (ATM, frame) has pretty much stopped growing and virtually no companies plan to invest in ATM or frame services within the next six to 12 months. As a result, more companies are migrating to MPLS primarily to avoid being left behind. In the world of the information superhighway, in order to keep the edge, businesses have to keep ahead of the competition and be as efficient in running their operations. MPLS enables them to be as efficient as possible.

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