INVESTMENT in innovative
new technology has put the largest private,
wholly owned Namibian internet service
provider ahead of its larger multi-national competitors.
According to the Technical Director of Internet Technologies Namibia,
Mr. Schalk Erasmus, the testing and subsequent implementation of
Multi-protocol Label Switching technology (MPLS) on the company’s
national network backbone has placed it on a higher level
of competency and is aimed at improving on their already excellent
service delivery track record.
He said that MPLS is an alternative to other services
which have similar identical goals such as Frame
Relay Networks and
traditional VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks). In the international
market MPLS is a good alternative for these technologies, because
it is better aligned with current and future
technology and requirements.
The creation of MPLS was essentially motivated to simplify
packet routing in high-speed IP networks which also allows
for
better traffic management by supporting multiple
service models,” he
explained. MPLS adds a
label header to each data packet being sent resulting in high-speed
routing due to Label Switching occurring faster
than traditional
IP table lookups.
ITN is proud to announce that its entire backbone network,
totalling 11 Points of Presence (POP’s), which
includes a
POP in South Africa, is now fully MPLS enabled.
After several months of intensive testing, the
network has withstood an onslaught of data packets with different
labels to test latency on the network. ITN now have a comprehensive
list of expected label-switched routing times dependant on customer
requirements.
|
 |
ITN plans to further their service delivery presence with the development and
installation of three more POP’s on their Namibia national
backbone. This will bring the total number of POP’s available on the company’s
national backbone to thirteen in Namibia.
MPLS is already available and puts ITN on a different level than
other service providers. We have extensively tested the solution and implemented
this across our entire backbone infrastructure, which will allow
our customers to benefit from future technologies right now, should it be a requirement.
MPLS was initially proposed by the ITN Board, and with ITN being Cisco-centric in
our network design; we fully understand the technology and are willing to embrace
this technology with open arms. Not only are we able to offer our customers guaranteed
uptimes via our Service Level Agreements, but are now also able to ensure
specific label-switching routing times from point-to-point where high-speed
data switching is at the essence of any customer’s requirement. We are
able to guarantee – in milliseconds – the amount
of time a data packet will take from a customer’s network in i.e. Oshakati
to the same customer’s network in i.e. Keetmanshoop using MPLS.”
He said that ITN was forced to make this investment sooner than anticipated,
since the old network lacked trustworthy and truthful management tools to deliver
Quality of Service and Latency expectations to a certain market segment. |
internet.na
•