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What is MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching)?
MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) Challenges of MPLS (which helped drive the push to SD-WAN): Expensive connectivity Long time to deploy (60, 90, 120 days plus lead time) Cloud & mobile access are neglected Internet performance & availability Security Management With the old, pre-SD-WAN: ’Hub & Spoke’ topology Branches communicated with the hub & the data center Internet access was typically centralized out of the Home Office Cloud internet went thru Headquarters MPLS gave up predictability & availability Backhauling internet traffic to the Data Center for security consumes a lot of expensive MPLS bandwidth and it often means added latency. (The “trombone effect”!) MPLS circuits are expensive.