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| COMPANY CONTACT Jeff Raice Packet Design, Inc 650.739.1880 jeff@packetdesign.com |
AGENCY CONTACT Janis Ulevich Ulevich & Orrange, Inc. 650.329.1590 info@u-o.com |
NEW VERSION OF PACKET DESIGN'S ROUTE EXPLORER
OFFERS VISIBILITY INTO MPLS VPN INFRASTRUCTURE
Ability to View VPNs Customer-by-Customer Helps
Service Providers Ensure Layer 3 Reachability, Privacy
PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 18, 2004 – Packet Design has extended the power of its route analytics technology into the fast-growing MPLS VPN market with a new "VPN-aware" version of its Route Explorer appliance.
VPN Explorer for the first time gives service providers full visibility into the layer 3 virtual private network infrastructure. With instant knowledge of both reachability within a customer's VPN, and privacy between VPNs, providers can offer their enterprise customers far more reliable VPN services.VPN Explorer incorporates the IETF RFC 2547bis standard widely adopted by service providers to deliver revenue-generating IP VPN services to enterprise customers. RFC 2547bis VPNs use both BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching). BGP, the routing protocol used to connect to the Internet, distributes the layer 3 VPN routing information that defines which customer sites can talk to each other across the provider's core network. MPLS handles forwarding of the traffic.
The new system adds support for MP-BGP (Multi-protocol BGP) to Route Explorer's already advanced BGP analysis functionality, which monitors and analyzes BGP routing events. Providers now can see network topology views broken out by individual customer VPN, and use specialized BGP diagnostic tools to pinpoint VPN-specific problems.
The Problem: Managing Layer 3 VPNs Without Layer 3 Visibility
Jeff Raice, Packet Design executive vice president of marketing and business development, said, "Service providers have embraced MPLS VPNs, and specifically those based on RFC 2547bis, as a response to enterprise customers who want the simplicity and flexibility of provider-managed layer 3 connectivity for their distributed sites. But successful MPLS VPN operation depends heavily on routing, which controls site-to-site reachability and policy, and customer-to-customer privacy. Routing issues have been largely ignored by network management vendors, whose tools address only device-level connectivity and performance. Adding to the management problem is the manual and error-prone process of router configuration. Until now service providers have had no way to know when routing errors have occurred or how to fix them. They have had to manage layer 3 VPNs without layer 3 visibility."
By applying layer 3 route analytics to VPNs, Route Explorer lets service providers accurately visualize – in real time and without the overhead of polling – how individual VPNs are overlaid on their network infrastructure. Specifically, they can monitor:
- reachability within the customer VPN, ensuring that VPN prefixes are being properly distributed between relevant provider edge (PE) routers for each customer site;
- privacy, guarding against unwanted route "leakage" or mingling of information between customer sites;
- policy, knowing whether VPN prefixes are distributed in accordance with customer-specific requirements, such as a full-mesh or hub-and-spoke;
The data gathered and analyzed by Router Explorer/MPLS VPN Edition gives providers the knowledge to ensure efficient VPN service on a customer-by-customer basis.
VPN Baselining Enables Detection of Reachability Issues, Privacy Violations
A single Route Explorer unit installed in the service provider's backbone network peers with provider edge routers and immediately begins monitoring all customer VPNs. By dynamically tracking VPN routing information – e.g., all PE routers participating in the VPN and every prefix being "advertised" from every customer site – the system automatically generates a baseline of each customer's VPN. A graphical "dashboard" then displays any deviations from the baseline, such as 1) a new PE router that appears as part of a customer's VPN, indicating a potential privacy violation that may be leaking routes between two customers, 2) one or more prefixes withdrawn from a customer's VPN, indicating a reduction in reachability, 3) two branch offices communicating directly with each other, violating a user policy mandating that all branch communication pass through corporate headquarters, or 4) the addition of new customer prefixes, showing that the customer may have added routes beyond his provider-set limit and is not being billed for them. Any deviations from the baseline can be set to trigger user-customizable alerts.
Once a problem is known, the network engineer can use Route Explorer's extensive diagnostic capabilities to determine its source – e.g., customer route announcement changes, provider errors in VPN configuration, or perhaps routing changes which are unrelated to the VPN but may impact VPN service. Route Explorer's History Navigator provides a full audit trail of every VPN routing event logged in its database on a per-customer basis, plus detailed event analysis and filtering. The result is significantly reduced problem detection and repair times.
Service providers can also use VPN Explorer proactively to differentiate their service-level agreement (SLA) offerings. Newly provisioned VPNs can begin generating revenues sooner, configurations can be validated before customers complain, and customers' security concerns can be satisfied with reports on VPN privacy.
Pricing and Availability
VPN Explorer will be available beginning this month. List prices start at approximately $100,000 and depend on the number of routers and VPN prefixes supported.
About Route Explorer
Sitting in the network infrastructure as if it were a router (though it forwards no traffic), Route Explorer "listens" to IP routing-protocol exchanges, creates an accurate layer 3 topology map and analyzes routing events to let network engineers pinpoint routing problems at a glance and resolve them quickly. All routing events are logged in a local data store, from which they can be analyzed and visualized in real time, or replayed later for retrospective analysis or planning purposes. The only route analytics product to support all four major routing protocols – BGP, OSPF, IS-IS and EIGRP – Route Explorer provides a single end-to-end view of the routing topology across protocol and domain boundaries.
About Packet Design, Inc.
© 2005. Packet Design Inc.
