As more and more companies deploy secondary data centers, service providers must provide suitable interconnects that offer sufficient performance. The July article explores data center interconnects on the high-level and this time we focus on what technology to use to actually implement the interconnection.

In this article, Jaroslav Rajić, CCNP/CCIP and CCSI at NIL Data Communications, analyses the advantages and limitations of two distinct approaches of designing the Data Center interconnect. One approach primarily relies on OSI Layer 2 (e.g. MetroEthernet with VLANs) and the other on OSI Layer-3 approach (IP and MPLS), with several »flavours« in-between. The analysis includes the comparison of OSI Layer 2 (802.1q, QinQ, P2P EoMPLS, VPLS) and OSI Layer 3 (L3 MPLS VPN), and mentions the OSI Layer 1 options (Dark Fiber, etc.).