MPLS WC 2025, and the learnings from MPLS WC 2024 “… it’s like Elf …”
“For SRv6, it's like the movie Elf when they realise the book is missing two pages, people are signing the pages as if SRv6 is ready to go, and it's not.”
As the next business week gears up for MPLS World Congress (WC) 2025, here are the musing from what I experienced at MPLS WC 2024.
Intro
Hot on the heels of Mobile World Congress (MWC) comes MPLS WC. Now in its 25th year, whilst the conference hit a key milestone, it didn't bring anything new to the table.
The event has two main tracks, the first focusing on MPLS/ Service Provider and the second on Quantum with AI & ML.
This series of post will focus on my feedback on the MPLS/ Service Provider highlights.
Looking forward to the Future of the Internet Protocol
The conference kicked off with a flurry of conversations around:
how to leverage IPv6 to deliver application/content aware networking, for both customer experience
to ensure ‘security’ (trust) on a given network path as well as keeping a subscribers data within the data region required by the governing law.
building Network Digital Twins (NDT) to test new features, to help move towards automation and playback failure scenarios to investigate route causes … etc.
Unfortunately for me the conversation from most vendors then started to 'turn south', as they all began to display that they've been drinking the 'SRv6 Kool-Aid'.
Cisco
Want to reinvent another way to monitor the existing services, for no good reason by using SRv6.
Juniper
Pushing the NDT as a key concept for:
“… data orientated decisions so that we can fail fast based on decision A vs. B, then A vs. C, B vs. C … etc."
Kireeti Kompella - Juniper Networks
Ciena
Realising that there's money in data:
Nokia
Came out swinging, showing their support (founding) of a ‘new’ open-source automation tool:
AvidThink
“it's an API economy”
So, what does this all mean anyways?
The industry catching up with the idea of applying business rules and logic to enriched data using ML, and that autonomic networking is the future … even if they think it will take another 20yrs.
Integrated Performance Measurement Session
Whilst my tolerance levels for hearing about SRv6 were severally tested, there was some light around Internetwork Performance Monitor (IPM) and Cisco summed it up the best:
And Colt is waking up to the idea that powering networks cost money, and insinuated that they would be looking to route their customers services based on cost, as long as it met the agreed SLA/KPIs:
And finally, I was disappointed when Verizon introduced KISS and didn't mean the classic rock band.
SRv6
What is SRv6?
SRv6 is an evolution in networking protocols which will have some significant benefits, however it's isn't fully finished yet in the various standards committees and as such isn't ready to deliver the potential benefits, nor should it be considered stable for a production environment.
What was my feedback to the Vendors?
I used the following analogy:
“It's like the movie Elf when they realise the book is missing two pages, however at the moment all the vendors are signing the pages as if SRv6 is ready to go, and it's not. There are several parts to complete, so why would anyone roll it out into a production network unless they could back it off to a vendor?”
Simon Beevers
So, that only leaves the Tier 1 ISPs who are able to deploy this with the direct backing of a vendor, and whilst this will create useful production data, as a subscriber to an ISP service, I don't want my connectivity built over ‘an unfinished story’.
Alternative
SR-MPLS using IPv6 native networking, (SR-MPLSv6 or SRo6 as I prefer to call it 😉), however there is limited support for this as most vendors need to program the IPv6 node SIDs for SR-MPLS.
KISS
Keep it Simple & Strategic