Reusing your routers on a new MPLS network

SASE Secure Access Service Edge

When obtaining price quotations for new MPLS networks, intuition may tell you to reuse the routers that you may already have installed on your network.  What is common sense is not always true, if you want managed services.

Carriers provide managed services to remove the headache of network management (and add money to their bottom line).  Many carriers will only manage routers that they supply the customer.  This might seem unfair, but if they are managing thousands of routers around the world, it becomes “unmanageable” if they are managing dozens of different router and router configurations.  Their economy of scales require standardization.

On the other hand, if you have rather standard routers, such as Cisco 1841, 2811, 3222 then the use of these routers could be a negotiating point in getting the carrier to manage them.  Just be sure that you keep your Smartnet subscription up to date. But if your routers are old, start fresh.  Too much is riding on your network.

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