The average enterprise network had MPLS running at 82% of sites in 2018. That fell to just 58% in 2020. About one-third of those networks have active backups for their MPLS service—a quarter of them have passive backups.
Looking at these numbers, we have to ask: what role will MPLS play in the WAN moving forward?
Industry expert and independent consultant Keith Langridge joins Greg to discuss the many different ways you can try to answer this question.
Is MPLS dead? Dying? Here to stay? Too complicated to say? Listen to the full episode below to hear what our experts think.
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Key Takeaways
MPLS is not dead, but it is undergoing a significant transformation and decline in traditional use cases.
While predictions vary, analysts generally see the market either declining or remaining flat. Data from TeleGeography's 2020 WAN Manager Survey showed a drop in the average percentage of sites running MPLS from 82% in 2018 to 58% in 2020.
The change involves a reduction in the number of small, legacy ports but an increase in the overall bandwidth carried, driven by growth in high-capacity ports.
The structure and footprint of MPLS networks are expected to change, with likely shrinkage and a greater focus on connectivity in third-party data centers and cloud on-ramp locations. Prices for MPLS are also anticipated to decrease.
The transformation of MPLS is primarily driven by four key factors.
Those factors are:
- The adoption of cloud services and SaaS
- The desire for local internet breakouts
- Evolving security models
- The rise of SD-WAN
The increasing prevalence of cloud-friendly applications means destinations are more often reached via the internet rather than centralized data centers. This encourages organizations to implement local internet breakouts for performance, cost savings, and improved access to cloud services.
However, local internet breakouts challenge traditional centralized perimeter security models, necessitating new approaches. SD-WAN is described as a major force that enables customers to use internet transport more effectively, provides visibility, central control, and application performance management, and facilitates the deployment of local internet breakouts and direct secure connectivity to the cloud.
Enterprises that have considered or adopted SD-WAN tend to have fewer sites running MPLS.
Enterprises are increasingly adopting a mix of network architectures and transport mechanisms.
This tailors solutions to different site types and business needs, with SD-WAN often providing an overlay for complexity management.
Customer approaches can be broadly categorized:
- Those prioritizing performance and security for critical applications (often retaining MPLS, fitting industries like healthcare and finance)
- Those wanting cost savings via internet transport but maintaining a similar architecture (using secure tunnels like IPSec/DMVPN facilitated by SD-WAN)
- Those focused on cloud-driven architectures and cost reduction (using internet transport like broadband and mobile with SD-WAN for local breakout)
Different sites within a single organization may fall into different categories (e.g., headquarters vs. retail branches vs. manufacturing plants), leading to varied network needs.
SD-WAN's ability to overlay various underlays (MPLS, DIA, broadband, mobile) provides flexibility and helps manage the performance of diverse transports. While a single SD-WAN vendor can simplify management, different vendors may excel in specific areas (like security or monitoring), potentially leading some enterprises to use different SD-WAN solutions for different site types or requirements.
Greg Bryan
Greg is Senior Manager, Enterprise Research at TeleGeography. He's spent the last decade and a half at TeleGeography developing many of our pricing products and reports about enterprise networks. He is a frequent speaker at conferences about corporate wide area networks and enterprise telecom services. He also hosts our podcast, TeleGeography Explains the Internet.
