When you aren’t an IT professional yourself, understanding all of the new technologies that underpin your business IT network can be tricky – but if you want to grow your company, they’re certainly worth getting to grips with.
MPLS is one of these solutions, and finding an experienced team to help you integrate MPLS into your network can hold some major advantages for your future business growth if implemented effectively.
Here, we’ll go over MPLS in a straightforward way to help you understand what it is, what it can do, and whether you should invest in it for your business.
What is MPLS?
We should start by breaking down the acronym – MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching, and you might have heard it talked about before if you’ve listened in on meetings with your IT team. In short, it’s a data management technique that is employed to help dynamically route the data traffic that runs through your business network.
So, the first part: Multi-Protocol means that MPLS can be used with any kind of data regardless of the protocol (essentially the language) that your devices use to communicate.
The Label part is referencing a tiny chunk of data that is attached to your data traffic as it goes through the network, and the Switching part then means that the Label Switch Router (LSR) is able to handle all of the data according to the information on the label.
One way to visualize how MPLS works as a non-tech person is to think of many packages that need to be delivered over a geographical area. The postman wouldn’t just drive to the opposite side of the area for the first delivery if delivery number two is right around the corner – and your MPLS system is intelligent to stop a similar scenario from happening with your data delivery.
This is because the label indicates the data’s destination and priority, and the switching technique can then come in and alter the delivery order dynamically according to what’s needed to keep your network running efficiently.
The Advantages of MPLS for Your Business
Now that you have a tighter grasp on what MPLS means and what it does within your network, let’s start to consider what it can do more tangibly for your business.
Faster Expansion to New Sites
Expanding to a new site is an exciting time for any business, but can also be a real headache, particularly when it comes to getting online. With an MPLS system, the complex series of tunnels required in older forms of network expansion is no longer needed, saving you time and money.
A Simpler Network
You can picture an MPLS connection between two locations as kind of like a miles-long ethernet cable linking up the areas – there are still jumps between carriers and devices in reality, but this simplified model is close to how the labeling system of MPLS works. A simplified network means that you’re less likely to run into problems and that you’ll find it easier to spot issues when they arise; a huge bonus for any overworked IT team!
Better User Experience
More and more businesses rely on cloud based and real time applications to give end users the best experience possible, but as these applications are reliant on good network performance, periods of heavy traffic can have a huge impact on user experience. MPLS can help you avoid this issue by intelligently routing data to eliminate problems like data loss as a result of network latency (anyone who’s experienced this can tell you that it’s definitely best avoided!)
Improved Efficiency
With an MPLS system, you can change the priority of different data traffic on your network according to your needs at that moment. This means that with just a few tweaks during busy periods, you can keep mission critical applications going by borrowing bandwidth from less important tasks that won’t suffer so much from the congestion.
Quicker Network Speeds
Business networks often have hundreds or thousands of users, and can easily become congested if not managed effectively, particularly if you’re dealing with many different kinds of data. If you implement MPLS to control the different data’s ruotes through the network, it will generally increase in speed, as issues like congestion become far less prevalent even during busy periods.
Lowered Downtime Costs
As we went over before, a simplified network tends to be one that’s a lot easier to manage, and although your team of IT professionals can likely handle a complex network, you’re removing the possibility for human error by taking out unnecessary variables. Accidents happen when you get hands on with a network, and if your team don’t have to as much, the chance for these accidents decreases, and you avoid the downtime costs that many businesses dread.
Investing in MPLS
We can’t tell you whether you should invest in MPLS for your business network – after all, every business is unique, and you’re likely to have considerations that we haven’t covered here. But here’s a quick checklist of a few more things to consider before you start talking to providers:
- Do you use your network for voice and data?
- Do you need to maximize uptime across locations?
- Does your network use a variety of types of data that all make use of the same connections?
- Does your network often suffer from congestion?
- Would the quick provisioning of new sites be beneficial for your business growth?
An answer of yes to one or more of these questions could mean that MPLS would be a good choice for your business. It isn’t the cheapest network tech out there, but if you get the most out of it by working with an in-house team or managed service provider and finding a deal that suits your budget, you’ll find that it’s highly effective, and could revolutionize your business IT network.
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