Managed virtual private LAN services

Within the data communications industry, there is renewed interest in a managed transport service that provides an optimized service interface to packet-oriented applications. This transport service is widely envisioned as an intelligent, flexible, and easily provisionable service platform that must also enable the dynamic creation of new revenue-generating data offerings for service providers. Recent standardization activities have focused on a managed virtual private network model as the basis for such service. In particular, the so-called layer 2 VPN (L2VPN) service model based on Ethernet/MPLS is particularly appealing as it combines the simplicity and ubiquity of Ethernet with the powerful service creation capabilities from MPLS. This paper discusses the various L2VPN architectures being proposed by the industry and identifies the key building blocks required to realize such services. © 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.