When the Peeredge Switches are directly connected to the customer’s MPLS network, every MPLS connected SIP Trunking customer is assigned a dedicated MPLS VRF and unique VLANs in the Peeredge datacenters which are connected to this VRF. The datacenter subnets are advertised into the customer’s VRF via multi-protocol BGP. The customer’s MPLS VRF must contain the IP routes necessary to reach the SIP Trunking endpoints. If a media flow-around design is used, then the IP routes for all IP endpoints (i.e. Phones) must also be advertised and reachable in the customer’s MPLS VRF. Since each MPLS customer has a dedicated VRF, MPLS networks are typically considered to be a secure network. As such, the TCP or UDP protocols can be used to communicate with the Peeredge Switches.
MPLS circuit at each customer location
This is the most deployed MPLS network topology.
Pros
End-to-end quality of service (QOS) configurations can be used to guarantee high quality voice calls.
The ability to support a media flow-around design to optimize the routing of RTP/SRTP media between the customer’s endpoints (i.e. IP Phones) and the Peeredge Switches.
Cons
More expensive than most other network topologies.
There is usually an additional cost to directly terminate third party MPLS circuits in the 46Labs datacenters.
MPLS circuit at the customer headquarters or datacenters
This topology is typically used when a customer used another third-party WAN transport provider.
Pros
End-to-end quality of service (QOS) configurations can be used to guarantee high quality voice calls across the MPLS portion of the network.
Cons
In this design all the signaling and media traffic must transit the one or two MPLS circuits at the customer headquarters or datacenters. These circuits must be properly sized to handle all the voice traffic.
These circuits must be properly sized to handle all the signaling and media traffic.
The MPLS provider will typically not offer any QOS guarantees as to the quality of the voice calls on third-party WAN transport.