Network Environment

EuropCom is a fictitious pan-European data and long-distance voice MPLS service provider, with POPs in France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Romania. EuropCom has been providing a set of IPv4 services over the past five years to different market segments, residential customers, and businesses. Two of these IPv4 services represent the principal revenue generators: layer 3 MPLS VPN and Internet access. Both services are MPLS switched through the EuropCom integrated MPLS core backbone.

EuropCom network uses a classical architecture with three levels of POPs, as illustrated in Figure 13-1.

Level 1 (L1) POPs form the backbone of the network. They are interconnected over OC-192 and OC-48 links. L1 POPs are also Internet exchanges, connected to major European ISPs. The L1 POPs connect to level 2 (L2) POPs over OC-48 links. L2 POPs aggregate level 3 (L3) POPs over OC-48 and OC-3 links, depending of the size of the L3 POP. Figure 13-2 presents EuropCom network in a geographical context.

Figure 13-2. EuropCom Geographical Topology

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In the EuropCom network, Provider Edge (PE) routers are dedicated to either the Internet or layer 3 MPLS VPN access.

The EuropCom backbone has the following characteristics:

• Highly secure over a dedicated private network.

• Uses high-bandwidth OC-48 and OC-192 backbone links for L1-L1 POPs connectivity, OC-48 for L2-L1 POPs connectivity, and OC-48 to OC-3 for L3-L2 POPs connectivity.

• MPLS-based forwarding for both VPN traffic and Internet traffic.

• Is overengineered so that QoS is not needed in the core. EuropCom deploys DiffServ in the edge layer only.

• Full L1 POP backbone redundancy.

• Uses a single autonomous system.

• Peers with major Tier 1 carriers.

EuropCom customer base covers the full range of typical ISP customers:

• Small businesses EuropCom provides network access and added-value services such as Internet access and Voice over IP (VoIP).

• Enterprises EuropCom offers transport, VPN, and Internet access services.

• Residential EuropCom provides a variety of services such as Internet and VoIP.

• Tier 2 ISP EuropCom offers Carrier Supporting Carrier (CsC) service.