Business · Oakford Technology

Multi Site Connectivity

Scalable. Secure. Wide Area Networking.

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a data-carrying technique used in the Oakford core network to send traffic via short path labels rather than using network address lookup.

This basically means that complex destination traffic gets processed faster and arrives quicker because instead of a router inspecting each individual packet for source and destination IP’s and then checking its own routing table. It processes that packet purely from the information in the MPLS label of where it wants to go.

What are the benefits of having MPLS in the Oakford core?

By having MPLS we are able to introduce an IP technology called VRF’s (Virtual [VPN] Routing and Forwarding) to the Oakford core network. A VRF is simply a ‘private routing domain’. We can apply a VRF per organisation and once you’re in a VRF, all your sites, no matter the geographical location can communicate privately and securely as if it were one big LAN.

How does this benefit me?

Private Wide Area Networking

With an Oakford MPLS solution you simply have one (or more) of our WAN (Wide Area Network) links back to our core network at each location. Then with a little configuration magic on our side and you will have a private wide area network over the Oakford core. Your inter-office traffic is entirely unseen by the internet or other core network users.

This means for example a finance server based in one office can be accessed securely by a user in a different office without that traffic or those files going over the internet and without the need for a VPN.

Resiliency

The Oakford core has been designed to be resilient. Meaning your connectivity and continuity of service is protected as carefully as possible.

  • We recommend that every site using an Oakford MPLS solution has a primary and secondary connection; both suitable for sustaining the daily traffic requirements of each location.
  • Our core network has a triangle of three peering devices located in different data centres. So we would further recommend that the primary and secondary circuits peer to different Oakford peering routers.
  • Each of our peering routers are configured in a virtual stack providing individual redundancy per peering router.

Reliability

Network up time is a key factor for all successful connectivity services. Our peering router triangle maintained an 100% up time in their first two years of being in production which has been a fantastic testament to the network architecture used for these devices, to ensure a continuity of service.

Find Out More

We offer a free consultation service for local businesses. Contact us today to find out what we can do for your business.

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