With the support of high reliability and service quality guarantee, MPLS technology, which is very popular in practice, is a product that exists in the modern building network architecture. It uses the label switching mechanism to provide predefined paths for data packets, which can effectively reduce delays and packet loss. It is particularly suitable for applications such as voice and video that have high real-time requirements. As smart buildings continue to have increasingly complex network demands, it is critical to understand the practical application of MPLS in the building environment.
Core advantages of MPLS networks in buildings
MPLS uses label switching to replace the complicated search process of traditional IP routing, greatly improving data transmission efficiency. In smart buildings, key applications such as elevator monitoring, doorman systems, and fire alarms are very sensitive to network delays. MPLS can assign exclusive labels to these traffic to ensure that key services are always transmitted with priority. Actual measurement data shows that building networks using MPLS can control video surveillance delays within 50 milliseconds, but traditional networks often exceed 200 milliseconds.
In a cross-floor, multi-tenant building environment, MPLS supports policy-based routing, allowing the property to assign independent virtual paths to different areas. For example, data traffic in the office area can be completely isolated from control traffic between devices to prevent mutual interference. A certain commercial complex successfully shortened the tenant network fault isolation time from hours to minutes by deploying MPLS, significantly improving operation and maintenance efficiency. Provide global procurement services for weak current intelligent products!
How to plan building MPLS network architecture
During the planning period of hospital construction, a comprehensive assessment of the types of terminal equipment and traffic characteristics inside the building must be carried out. It is recommended to implement a layered design. The core layer should be equipped with high-performance label switching routers, the aggregation layer should be responsible for policy execution, and the access layer should achieve terminal connection purposes. A hospital has a newly built campus and deployed MPLS in a hierarchical manner to successfully host more than 2,000 medical terminals, including mobile nursing vehicles and remote consultation systems.
When the logical architecture is designed simultaneously, physical wiring is required. For weak current wells, it is a wise choice to reserve dual optical fiber links for operations. Physical isolation must be maintained between core equipment. The actual case shows that if an MPLS router uses dual main control boards, failover can reach 50 milliseconds, which is much longer than the second-level interruption time of traditional networks. When planning, the expansion needs in the next five years must be taken into consideration, and a 30% margin of label switching capacity must be ensured.
Comparison of MPLS and SD-WAN in buildings
SD-WAN uses application identification to perform intelligent route selection, making it more suitable for branch interconnection scenarios, while MPLS can provide hard bandwidth guarantees for it and can better adapt to the high reliability requirements of fixed equipment inside buildings. Tests in an intelligent manufacturing park found that for industrial camera detection systems, MPLS improved jitter control by about 40% compared to SD-WAN.
The two technologies are not mutually exclusive, and modern buildings often use a hybrid solution in which MPLS secures the core production network and SD-WAN handles Internet access. The practice of a smart office building shows that key services such as digital intercoms are completed using MPLS dedicated lines, and ordinary offices use SD-WAN to divert Internet traffic. With annual network costs reduced by 35%, the availability of core services reaches 99.99%.
Implementation steps for building MPLS networks
Before implementation, a comprehensive traffic analysis must be carried out to identify the CoS-as-a-service level requirements of different applications. In this regard, it is recommended to use professional tools to map the data flow within the building. One specific example is a financial center. Through analysis, it was concluded that the trading system only accounted for 20% of the traffic, but it required the highest priority. On this basis, the financial center set up an appropriate label mapping strategy.
In the deployment stage, the suggestion is to perform a rolling upgrade by region, first upgrade the test area, and then upgrade the core area. When performing configuration operations, pay special attention to the collaboration between the label allocation strategy and the routing strategy. Such a case shows that there may also be an out-of-sync situation between BGP routing and LDP label distribution, which may cause the video conference to freeze. After completing the relevant operations, a 72-hour continuous stress test should be carried out to verify whether the fault switching mechanism is effective.
Key points of operation and maintenance management of MPLS network
During daily monitoring, the key objects of focus are set to label forwarding table capacity and link utilization. It is suggested to set a threshold alarm, and when the usage of the label table exceeds 70%, the capacity expansion operation should be carried out in a timely manner. The reason why new devices cannot be registered in a certain park is because tag table monitoring is ignored. Through subsequent analysis, it was found that the tag table had been running at full capacity for two weeks.
Regular MPLS-aware network security inspections are extremely critical. To check the label spoofing protection strategy, a commercial building has suffered a pseudo-label injection attack. It is recommended to simulate a label switching path failure every three months to verify the fast rerouting mechanism. The operation and maintenance team should master the use of MPLS ping and other special diagnostic tools.
Cost optimization of MPLS networks in buildings
Equipment selection needs to consider the converged platform that supports MPLS rather than independent equipment. The new generation aggregation router can achieve MPLS, IPv6 and SD-WAN in a single device. An office building has saved 40% of cabinet space by using such equipment, and provides global procurement services for weak current intelligent products!
The solution that can significantly reduce costs is the layered service model. For systems that do not have high real-time requirements, such as environmental monitoring, the access method is copper cable access and low-priority tags are used. The core system, such as security access control, uses optical fiber access and high-priority tags. There is a smart hotel that uses this solution to reduce network investment by 25% while ensuring key services.
Let’s discuss what is the most prominent challenge you encountered during the deployment of building MPLS networks. Is it the complexity of the technology, the issues related to cost control, or the skills reserve of the operation and maintenance team? You are sincerely invited to share your practical experience in the comment area. If this article has been helpful to you, please like it to support it and share it with colleagues who are increasingly in need.
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