Network technology

Raya Telecom infrastructure consists of a private IP+ATM - MPLS based network built on top of high-speed Telecom Egypt’s SDH rings.

Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) fuses the intelligence of routing with the performance of switching and provides significant benefits to networks with a pure IP architecture, as well as those with IP and ATM, or a mix of other Layer 2 technologies.

MPLS technology is key to scalable Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), enabling efficient utilization of existing networks to meet future growth and rapid fault correction of link and node failure. The technology also helps deliver highly scalable, differentiated end-to-end IP services with simpler configuration, management, and provisioning for both service provider and subscribers.

The MPLS standard, published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), evolved from the Cisco Tag Switching implementation. Cisco leadership and experience in the Tag Switching and MPLS arena translates into a feature-rich implementation and a robust, proven platform for service-provider and business networks.

Based on label swapping, a single forwarding mechanism provides opportunities for new control paradigms and applications. MPLS Label Forwarding is performed with a label lookup for an incoming label, which is then swapped with the outgoing label and finally sent to the next hop. Labels are imposed on the packets only once at the edge of the MPLS network and removed at the other end. These labels are assigned to packets based on groupings or forwarding equivalence classes (FECs). Packets belonging to the same FEC get similar treatment. The label is added between the Layer 2 and the Layer 3 header (in a packet environment) or in the virtual path identifier/virtual channel identifier (VPI/VCI) field (in ATM networks). The core network merely reads labels, applies appropriate services, and forwards packets based on the labels. This MPLS lookup and forwarding scheme offers the ability to explicitly control routing based on destination and source addresses, allowing easier introduction of new IP services. MPLS technology provides a rich set of applications that deliver outstanding performance to end customers, including:

	Traffic engineering
	Guaranteed bandwidth
	QoS (Quality of Service) and CoS (Class of Service)
	Scalable VPN architectures
	Support of Multi-services
	Fast Reroutes

Another Key advantage to Raya Telecom Network is the single vendor platform that allows the deployment of all features of technologies without having to go into interoperability problems. Our network would span more than 60 points of presence (POPs) throughout Egypt.