Verizon Business today expanded its Private IP service portfolio, giving enterprise customers an option for using its multi-protocol label switched (MPLS) backbone network without surrendering control of their IP routing. The new Private IP Layer 2 service is one more option for enterprises migrating from legacy data services onto IP.

The service is immediately available in the United States and will be offered globally in 2007 to the 116 countries where Verizon Business currently offers Private IP. It will leverage pseudowire technology to create a virtual private wire service that has the stringent quality of service (QoS) of MPLS-based offerings, said Susan Waterson, group manager of product management for Verizon Business. Also coming in 2007 will be another form of Layer 2 Virtual Private Network, a fully meshed offering known as Virtual Private LAN Service or VPLS.

This initial offering uses pseudowire to create a logical connection between two edge switches at Layer 2 that perform essentially like a private virtual channel (PVC) on a frame relay network. Private IP Layer 2 becomes another option for Verizon Business customers, Waterson said.

“Our Private IP service is by far the fastest growing product in the company right now,” she said. “That is a Layer 3 service based on our MPLS backbone. This is a complementary announcement that we are making, with a Layer 2 alternative.”

The primary advantage to the new offering is the ability for customers to retain control of their IP routing and not to have to turn over internal IP addresses for management by a service provider, Waterson said. At the same time, those customers get the advantage of being part of a private MPLS backbone, where their traffic is not touched by the public Internet.

“In the private IP world today, customers hand routing information over to us, and we move their traffic along based on the IP addresses they provide,” Waterson said. “For a variety of reasons, some customers don’t want to give out that information. There may be some perceived security issues, or just the notion of handing all that routing info over to a service provider concerns them. Customers have either decided they want to maintain that routing information or they may have built up their network in the last 10 to 15 years over frame, and it’s a challenge to unravel all of that. A Layer 2 service works for them.”

Financial services companies, health care operators and governments are among the target customers of the new offering.

The service supports encapsulation of ATM, frame, high level data link control and point-to-point protocol, and will support Ethernet encapsulation in 2007. Because it isn’t IP-routed, the Private IP Layer 2 service doesn’t offer an any-to-any link, but does allow single site to multi-site connectivity.

By providing their customers with a more gradual transition path to IP, Verizon Business enables them to make the jump when it makes the most sense for their operations, Waterson said. An enterprise with an existing frame relay network today “could turn up Private IP as a PVC and start moving traffic off that frame relay network” on link by link basis, she said. “It’s not an overburdening proposition. Some customers may feel that they have designed their networks and they have the resources, the staff and the hardware in place--why disrupt that unless there is a compelling reason? Some service providers have made bold statements [ending] frame and ATM--we are not saying that at all. We continue to see growth in those networks and there is no reason for us to turn off those networks.”

Initially, Verizon is offering QoS on the inherent class of service of the encapsulation, and it will add ATM and Ethernet QoS in the first half of 2007. Companies requiring more mesh-type connections are more likely to move to a Layer 3 service, Waterson added.