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Definitive MPLS Network Designs Review by Professor Donald Mitchell
Helpful Overview of How MPLS Can Be Applied to Gain Advantages
Most network design books focus on how to do that task. Definitive MPLS takes a different route. It provides the basics of how Multiprotocol Label Switching Works and delivers for the bulk of the book a series of hypothetical examples to demonstrate the flexibility of MPLS. If one of these examples comes close to what you do, you'll find the book a lot more valuable than if all the examples are somewhat remote to your application. I found this to be a peculiar way to assemble such a book.
The examples are:
1. An interexchange carrier that provides data and long-distance services throughout the U.S. including LATA services and 31 flavors of data services. The example is based on a fictitious company that owns its fiber and transmission facilities as Layer 2 switching infrastructure (ATM and Frame Relay).
2. Another fictitious company is a telco that operates an ISP in addition to being an existing telecom provider in Asia or Europe.
3. The next fictitious example operates in more than 60 countries serving medium and large international companies, and is using virtual POPs based on co-location of some routers in regional service providers' premises.
4. The final example is a fictitious European bank holding company originally based in the UK that has expanded into a multi-continent organization with insurance and brokerage operations. The organization wants to keep the flexibility to quickly add other acquired financial institutions to its base.
The first two chapters provide about a hundred pages on the basics of MPLS. I found it easy to follow, and I'm not an engineer nor a software professional. For those with advanced questions, this material in fact may be a little too simple.
I would have liked the book a lot better if it had dealt more with a process for making design decisions rather than providing so many cases.