XO Communications has announced the launch of XO MPLS IP-VPN, the company’s new network-based IP-VPN solution that offers businesses and large enterprises a secure, intelligent and managed network to connect offices, customers and partners and converge a wide range of voice, video and data applications over a single IP network infrastructure.

Delivered over the XO private, nationwide Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based IP network and available in 75 major metropolitan markets across the United States, XO MPLS IP-VPN provides a wide range of access options to connect locations and flexible classes of services to prioritize Internet, intranet, extranet, voice, video and mission-critical business applications – all over a single, high performance application-aware IP network.

The service represents the initial step of XO Communications’ broader IP convergence services strategy. Later this year XO will integrate its MPLS IP-VPN service with its award-winning business-class VoIP service, XOptions Flex. This integrated offering will give small and medium-sized businesses as well as large enterprises with smaller offices nationwide an end-to-end converged wide area networking solution for voice and data communications. XO will also expand its VoIP services portfolio later this year to support larger businesses and enterprises.

“With the launch of XO MPLS IP-VPN, we’re expanding our IP solutions to offer more intelligent and more efficient networking services to businesses that need to improve communications between employees, customers and partners,” said Tom Cady, president of XO Business Services. “XO MPLS IP-VPN allows businesses to simplify network management and introduce a wide range of new applications and capabilities all over a single, converged IP network.”

Key benefits of XO MPLS IP-VPN include:
• Nationwide Coverage – Broad coverage with service availability in 75 metropolitan markets across the United States
• Flexible and Scalable Network Architecture – MPLS-based network architecture provides any-to-any connectivity among all sites and automatically sets up pathways to new sites.
• Broad Range of Access Options – Customers can utilize the service with Dedicated Internet Access at speeds from T-1 through OC-X and Ethernet services.
• Robust Classes of Service – Optimize data traffic flows to support any type of application with one flat rate for access to all four classes of service.
• Fully Managed – Reduces total cost of ownership and provides 24x7 monitoring of network facilities and equipment.

As part of the fully-managed solution, XO provides network designs based on customers’ network topology, applications and other wide area network requirements. XO can also supply, install and maintain customer premise equipment and assign bandwidth for applications based on the classes of service. Customers also have the option to utilize their own premise equipment and manage it themselves.

XO MPLS IP-VPN is also designed to provide enterprises with a flexible infrastructure to support the migration to a single IP-based communications network. The solution can be used to integrate different traffic types from existing legacy networks, including Frame Relay, onto one network as enterprises transition to a single, converged IP communications strategy.

“The XO MPLS IP-VPN solution is a strong step in serving enterprise customers with converged voice and data applications,” said Cindy Whelan, senior analyst, Current Analysis. “XO’s IP heritage and powerful access network portfolio positions its new IP VPN services to meet the needs of customers ranging from smaller multi-site businesses to large enterprises.”

Classes of Service
XO MPLS IP-VPN enables businesses to prioritize mission-critical traffic such as voice, video and other mission-critical applications over non-urgent traffic such as email and web browsing. By prioritizing traffic, businesses can safeguard high-priority traffic over low-priority traffic, while not having to increase bandwidth purely to support non-critical traffic. The service also allows customers to allocate bandwidth and prioritize applications and have any class of service utilize up to the full available bandwidth without incurring additional charges. XO MPLS IP-VPN offers four classes of service:
• Real Time CoS – for applications that are very sensitive to latency and jitter, such as VoIP.
• Critical CoS –for applications that can withstand higher latency and jitter, but still need guarantees on both delay and jitter such as video applications.
• Priority CoS –for applications which need to take priority, but are not susceptible to variations in latency or jitter such as database applications.
• Standard CoS – for applications which can withstand moderate to high variations in latency or jitter such as email and web browsing.

Service Level Agreements
XO MPLS IP-VPN is backed by service level agreements for each class of service encompassing availability, latency, packet delivery and jitter:

Class of Service Latency Packet Delivery Jitter Availability
Real Time 55 ms 100% 0.5 ms 100%
Critical 55 ms 99.99% 0.8 ms 100%
Priority 55 ms 99.9% 0.9 ms 100%
Standard 65 ms 99% 1 ms 100%