[Asterisk-biz] SIP and IAX Trunks with QoS

[Michael Young]

>Generally, this makes sense. 

Wow. Thanks.
 
>However, regarding the "MPLS Connections to Termination Providers"
part:

>a) you seem to be drinking too much of MPLS koolaid. MPLS does not
>guarantee you QoS. You are far better off with real transport (and I
mean,
>TDM transport - it is far harder for a carrier to screw around with TDM
>transport, running it through non-TDM equipment, than to sell you a
>"inter-city ethernet" which is, in fact, just ethernet MPLS transported
on
>their IP network). 

I agree with the statement "MPLS does not guarantee you QoS", and the
rest of your comments are accurate too. We use MPLS to lower costs, and
have negotiated SLAs to ensure performance. The fact is most of our
network today is TDM, but many carriers\customers\interested people
think Ethernet is the future. Most of our expansion will leverage MPLS
where it makes financial sense.

>b) You point out that there are at most two router hops on your
network, 
>as if it was a good thing. It isn't. Number of router hops has nothing
to 
>do with performance.

I agree that number of router hops has nothing to do with performance;
however, more hops are more points of failure and more chances for
something to go wrong.

>c) You talk about QoS. I don't care about QoS. Give me TDM any day. :)

You do tend to weigh in on discussions on this list about QoS from time
to time, though :)

>d) You mention L3 and MCI. Have they already agreed to do business
through 
>your transport ports?

Yes. We've been doing this in the Midwest (St. Louis, Kansas City,
Chicago) for 18 months now with both carriers. We, of course, pay them
for the privilege of doing business with them...

>Other than that, we do the same thing (only local to new york - not
>looking to expand anywhere else). I simply do not think there's any
value
>in running a nationwide network just to sell service like that.
Extranets
>are so 1995. :)

As much as I love New York (lived there for five years), there are too
many of us in the rest of the US to ignore the potential. And on the
1995 comment: Someday, my paisley ties will be back in style, too... or,
wait, was that 1985?  ;)