When the Peeredge Switches are directly connected to a service provider or customer’s MPLS network, each customer is assigned a dedicated MPLS Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) instance.
If there is an network to network interface (NNI) connection directly into the 46Labs datacenters, then a dedicated VLAN in the Peeredge datacenters are connected to each customer’s VRF. The 46Labs datacenter subnets (hosting the Peeredge Switches) 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.
If there in no NNI connection directly into the 46Labs datacenters, then the Peeredge Switch can be place in the Service Provider or Customer network to access the MPLS network.
If there in no NNI connection directly into the 46Labs datacenters, then an additional network topology will be required to reach the 46Labs Cloud.
Pros
End-to-end quality of service (QOS) configurations can be used to guarantee high quality voice calls across the MPLS network.
The ability to support a media flow-around (anchor media disabled) 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.