Megaport advantages
The advantages of using Megaport’s software-defined network (SDN) instead of MPLS include:- Flexibility for optimal pricing — Megaport provides an extremely cost-effective solution compared to MPLS in most markets. At any time, you can add or delete services or adjust bandwidth for connections. This ensures you always have the right price, you can easily scale as your business grows, and you only pay for what you need. To take full advantage of the flexibility, you can implement tools to adjust connection speeds as required and get the full benefit of the elastic Megaport network.
- Free of long-term contracts — Megaport connections do not require long-term contracts, so you don’t have to predict traffic profiles for years at a time or get locked into a commitment for a specific topology.
- Speed of deployment — You can add and delete connections within minutes through the Megaport Portal or API.
- Consistent latency — Direct Layer 2 connections provide consistent latency and, in many cases, lower latency between locations, improving overall performance and increasing throughput.
- No risk — With no contracts and no long-term commitments to traffic profile estimates for the next several years, using Megaport lets you manage your network carefully and make adjustments as your business needs change. You are never locked into a long-term commitment or price.
- Dependability — Each Megaport data center has two or more diverse fiber connections into the Megaport global network, and each VXC is protected by all available fiber paths at the data center. Each connection automatically fails over to the next.
Considerations
There are some considerations when thinking about Megaport solutions with an MPLS network:- Dealing with multiple providers and data center operators — With MPLS, you often commit to a contract with a single network provider. But the all-or-nothing MPLS relationship has real limitations that restrict you to a single network with a fixed, hardware-based configuration, reducing your growth options. While switching providers is not the easiest task, and adding Megaport introduces a new customer-provider relationship, you gain the advantage of Megaport’s Cloud Service Provider (CSP) agnostic approach to large-scale interconnection using dynamic connections.
- Challenging to connect Megaport to MPLS circuits — It can be difficult to terminate a connection from a Port to a carrier MPLS interface. MPLS providers have control of the router and are often resistant to adding Megaport details to the router and allowing access for Megaport traffic. Whether or not your MPLS provider will cooperate with Megaport needs to be a consideration in the design.
- Procuring the last mile — One of the biggest challenges in moving from MPLS to SDN is procuring, managing, and paying for the “last mile” connectivity. For more information, see Next steps with SD-WAN.