Anybody have any sites on AT&T MPLS?

Yes, we are in the process of switching all of our point to point T1’s to MPLS. It is the way to go for many reasons. Disaster recovery being a major one. Performance is also expected to improve on our WAN links. I don’t have exact numbers, but due to how the routing works in the cloud, we expect a small increase in throughput.

Thanks for the feedback. It’s good to hear a confirmation since that is such an integral piece and there’s no going back after the migration.

Rusty, we have several clients on MPLS, and all of them seem to like it.

I know we have at least one client in Dallas ($1B+ Assets) that is moving to ATT’s flavor of MPLS specifically.

This has been a common occurrence all of the major Telephone/ISP company have been moving their customers away from frame-relay. As for using VoIP on a MPLS shouldn’t be a problem actually with CoS(Class-of-Service) you can prioritize your traffic so that you dooonntt gettt any of the funny sounding conversations because someone in the back is downloading a large file. I would suggest using CoS over QoS, QoS guarantees bandwidth for traffic, where as CoS is more of a will give it our best effort. CoS is much easier to do a mass rollout with.

You can also get backup links like a local DSL connection and have the router fail over to the DSL connection and open a VPN tunnel back into the MPLS cloud.

Rusty & Matt, there have been some good post here but I wanted to let you know about a RECENT experience with AT&T and MPLS. You can buy MPLS from an AT&T reseller or directly from AT&T. The bank, that’s not too far from you, got bids from 2 different AT&T resellers and the were VERY different. As much as $2k per month for what was the exact same service. Just get a couple of bids and check them out.

MPLS is the network of choice for most banks these days.

Never hurts to do your due diligence. Thanks for the tip Henry.

Great discussion guy, this will be really helpful to the community.

Hey Rusty, We have several clients on ATT MPLS. Do shop around as Henry mentioned prices can differ substantially. As JB mentioned, you have to specifically order COS from the service provider; it’s not much but if you don’t order it your voice quality will suffer. QOS configuration on the router for MPLS is different than frame, be glad to share some sample configs with you if you want to PM me.

The telcos will sell you on disaster recovery benefits of MPLS but it won’t do you a bit of good unless you have a DR site and the technology infrastructure to support DR (which any bank should have). Currently market rates for T1s are cheaper for locations with 7 sites or less, after that you will break even with MPLS. So, MPLS is a hot WAN technology and will most likely become the WAN technology of the future but don’t totally discount P2P T1s yet.

Definitely shop the rates. With our bank (130+ sites), CDW saved us more than $35K/month over the local sales staff’s offering. CDW has a full-time AT&T rep on site at their office and can quote rates in a matter of days, not months like our local salesman. One other benefit of a re-seller – they stay involved to help resolve all the billing disputes you WILL HAVE with AT&T. It’s another discussion, but the billing issues with AT&T will not go away with MPLS.

Whoa…Had NO idea CDW was in that business….Does there AT&T rep cover the US?

Good Info… Henry

Yes, their AT&T rep covers all areas. They also resell circuits from all the major carriers. CDW even resells local dial tone, phone systems, paper, video conferencing, and a bunch of other things you wouldn’t expect. About all they haven’t been able to sell to us is an IBM p-series of the size we require.

Thanks for the CDW reference. I actually just got off the phone with one of their AT&T team members. He was very knowledgable and mentioned a few legacy SBC Frame conversions to AT&T MPLS he has worked recently.