MPLS vs Point to Point T1's - QOS issues?

[duster22]

My company has 6 retail locations in the Washington DC area. My choice for a WAN are MPLS or point to point T-1's. We currently have T-1's to each location into a channel bank where voice and data (256k) are broken out. I need to go faster to add VOIP and possibly security cameras.

My question is about QOS using MPLS. I have read an article or two about the complexity of QOS on MPLS. Does anyone have any experience with this? Costs being relatively equal, my thought is to go with point to point as it would not be a shared network and I could have total control over QOS.

Anyone have experience with security camera bandwidth requirements? I know there are a million variables. To keep it simple, how much bandwidth for one camera at full motion at bigger resolutions (640x480) and smaller resolution (320x280)? Is anyone doing security cameras over a DSL VPN?

Thank you

 

[BillKill]

Duster22,

I have had experience configuring QOS on both WAN link types. You are correct in your view of having total control over QOS via leased lines(QOS is easy to configure over the leased lines as well). QOS over MPLS is a bit more advanced to configure due to you have to make sure your edge routers have the proper QOS diffserve code point values & QOS level mappings match the carriers values.

It also depends on the type of edge routers you have as well. We have Nortel & Cisco edge routers. The Cisco's handle both types of WAN QOS setups well. The Nortel's have problems with QOS over MPLS links.

Hope this helps.

Bill

 

[artesian2000]

On the ATT offer QoS can be done by originating IP address. I've had success in filling out there templates and just providing the IP ranges for each class. The router are then priotizing them based on that information. I have not had to configure this myself in the router due to I bought the managed router from them.

 

[plshlpme]

with MPLS you get to take advantage of the fact that the ISP already has a QOS aware backbone
there is just the simple config on your edge routers that will need to be done...

and your provider will work with you to establish the configs that will need to be done...