GREENFIELD ONLINE ADOPTS MPLS FOR ITS US CONNECTIVITY

Background

Since 1994, Greenfield Online has been combining sampling capabilities with research experience and advanced technologies to serve the data collection and infrastructure needs of research and consulting companies. Clients, thus are able to conduct online research without making investments in technology or infrastructure.

Greenfield Online combines Internet-based research tools, research experience, and a panel of U.S. $3.1 million and more (3.4 million and more globally) to provide an outsourcing solution. The company has made huge investments in developing one of the largest online research panels in the industry and has developed proprietary recruitment and maintenance strategies that have helped to shape the online research industry.

Greenfield Online became known as an industry pioneer, and was involved in helping to validate the methodology to the research industry.

Requirement

GFOL or Greenfield Online Limited has international office/offices in CT, US, which was to be connected to its local office in Gurgaon in India, for video/voice applications. GFOL was looking for an alternative solution to traditional TDM based IPLC circuit to connect their location in India to their international location in Wilton, CT. They were looking for a service provider who would provide them with an end-to-end solution including network design, network implementation and network management. The key network attributes which GFOL was seeking from the service provider was high uptime commitments, a highly flexible and scalable network solution, network management and monitoring, end-to-end security and a cost-effective solution.

SOLUTION SUMMARY

Architecture

Sify proposed the Layer 2 MPLS enabled VPN to connect the GFOL location in India to its International office. Sify in consortium with its International partner, BtNA operates a Global MPLS network to provide MPLS WAN services to its customers globally. Sify has its own co-located International PoPs in Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong and London, which interconnect with its partners PoP to route the customers, traffic to International locations. Layer 2 VPN model is a method for establishing simple point-to-point tunnels on an MPLS network that can handle various forms of Layer 2 traffic. The last mile is terminated on the PE router. This interface will not be configured for any IP address. The Layer 2 frame arriving on the PE router from the customerÕs end will be transferred over an MPLS tunnel to the other end, resulting in a virtual point-to-point leased line to the customer. Please refer to the diagram below for depiction of the layer 2 MPLS network. The customer can configure an end-to-end IP on the virtual leased line, using its own private IP Addressing scheme. These IP addresses will not be visible in the Service Provider core and Sify will not have any knowledge about the customer's Layer 3 routing. The encapsulation can be Frame Relay or ATM or HDLC or PPP. Sify's network solution provides for a cost-effective, scalable and re-configurable alternative to traditional IPLC-based networks.

The proposed Layer 2 MPLS solution was to act like a "Pseudo IPLC" for GFOL and having the same capacities as of a IPLC based TDM network, with the advantages of an IP network.

The GFOL location in Gurgaon, India was connected to the Sify NOC in Gurgaon on a primary E1 link terminating on the Sify NOC in Gurgaon. This primary E1 link from one local basic service provider was backed up by a secondary E1 link from a different local basic service provider, which was terminated on Sify NOC in Gurgaon. This ensured last mile and link level redundancy for GOL. Initially Sify has provisioned a 1.5 mbps MPLS bandwidth at this location, which was to be scaled gradually to higher bandwidths as and when GFOL's requirements scaled up.

* The GFOL location in US was connected to the Sify partner (BtNA) PoP in New York on a primary T1 last mile circuit. This primary T1 circuit was backed up by a secondary T1 circuit terminating on the secondary (BtNA) PoP in Philadelphia. This ensured high uptimes for GFOL on the last mile in US also.

* Since GFOL was looking for a meshed network, which would have involved a few more sites in UK and US, Sify proposed a Layer 2 Frame Relay encapsulation over MPLS. The interface in the GFOL router and PE router was configured for Frame relay encapsulation.

* The Layer 2 frame arriving on the PE router from the GFOL location in Gurgaon was transferred over an MPLS tunnel to the GFOL location in US, resulting in a virtual point-to-point leased line for GFOL. This provided GFOL an option of configuring an end-to-end IP on the virtual leased line, using its own private IP addressing scheme. These IP addresses were not visible in the service provider core and thus Sify was without any knowledge of the GFOL Layer 3 routing.

* Sify provisioned the MPLS end-to-end Layer 2 LSP and provide the DLCI number to GFOL to configure the PVC from GFOL, Gurgaon to GFOL location in US. Sify provisioned primary and secondary PVCs for the redundancy. Sify also created and provided redundant DLCIs for each PVCs on secondary last mile circuits.