Abstract of my thesis.

This thesis will study the operation of Virtual Private Network over Multiprotocol Label

Switching (VPN MPLS) and Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN). The thesis also will evaluate

the similarities, security issues and technical possible ways of VPN MPLS and VLAN

implementation.

MPLS has been used by service providers over the past few years. It has been used for traffic

engineering purposes. The IP/MPLS-Based VPNs is the latest application deployed by service

providers. MPLS VPN is versatile solution which addresses the problems faced by most of

networks- speed, scalability and quality of service and management.

Over the last few years, the internet has evolved into a ubiquitous network that inspired the

development of a variety of new applications in business and consumers market. In addition to

the traditional data services provided over internet, new multimedia services are being developed

and deployed. The internet has emerged as the networks of choice for providing these converged

services. These applications have challenged the demand of guaranteed bandwidth and quality of

service in the network backbone.

Additionally, the exponential growth in the number of users and the volume of traffic adds

another scalability problem to the existing one. The posed threats are easily mitigated by

IP/MPLS-VPN based technology, the technology which is going to be addressed by this thesis.

In contrast to IP/MPLS-VPN, VLAN is a logical Local Area Network, a layer 2 based

technology. It functions exactly as LAN with added advantages of enhanced security, flexibility

and scalability.

VLAN is a network merely deployed on consumer premises. VLAN is a versatile solution which

addresses the problems faced by the most of local area network- speed, scalability and quality of

service.

As now we know that, MPLS VPN and VLANs are two technologies which are relating each

other the difference between the two, is the way they are applied.

As we have seen MPLS VPN is the one of the wide area network technology which can be

utilized by service providers to easy deployment of VPN to connect geographically separated

customer sites. The MPLS VPN offers scalability, flexibility and security integration.

From my point of view, due to the rapid expand of network demand and attributes which are

required to be guaranteed to customer sites. The MPLS VPN must be integrated with label

servers.

The role of label server will be used to assigning the labels to the client, and making sure that the

label is assigned to the legal client.

The CE will act as client and PE will act as label client server. The CE sends a reguest to a label

client server (PE) to gain access to network using access credentials. In turn the label client

server (PE) sends the label request and authentication credentials to label server. The label server

checks that information and verifies the CE’s proof identification along with, optionally

attributes related to the request. The server will act accordingly based on the parameters passed.

This architecture will increase the scalability of network, flexibility, less manual effort and also

will increase security because the security policy will be well centralized.

VLANs are widely implemented by customers to easy segregation of end users per resources

within a company. VLANs offer scalability, flexibility and security integration on local area

network.