AT&T's IP VPN proves beneficial to electronics parts supplier: Allied Electronics uses network to speed up order processing

America's Network, Jan 15, 2005 by Nguyet Le Thomas

Receiving up to 3,000 daily orders for electronics parts was putting such a strain on Allied Electronics' order-entry system that weekly outages due to overload on the system's Frame Relay network became commonplace. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company needed a network that would accommodate the increasing customer demand.

Alan Bruns, Allied Electronics' information services director, says the company not only needed a network that offered lots of bandwidth, but was flexible enough to incorporate future network needs with minimal additional outlay. Also, the company wanted to monitor its 56 operations centers without having to hire in-house IT personnel. AT&T's Internet-protocol virtual private network (IP VPN) operating via the carrier's multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) infrastructure was the answer.

BANDWIDTH NEEDED

Since 2002, Allied Electronics had been operating on AT&T's Frame Relay network, which Bruns says did not provide the bandwidth capacity to accommodate the company's newly created in-house order-processing system based on an Open VMS Alpha cluster.

"Growth of the company required more bandwidth," Bruns says. "Our business grew 15% over the past year. We developed a new order-processing system and wanted to move away from the 'green screen' (legacy order system)."

Allied Electronics ensures that all orders are processed and shipped on the same day they are received. "The problem was that the system running over the [Frame Relay] network could not keep up with our salespeople's phone conversations with customers," Bruns says. "That resulted in note-taking while on the phone, followed later by order entry. It was inefficient."

Another problem Bruns needed to solve was the constant system failures due to multiple applications inundating the system. "It seemed there was an outage at one to two sites every week," Bruns says.

Allied Electronics, which still had a year left on its Frame Relay contract with AT&T, approached the carrier in early 2004 about switching to a more reliable, higher bandwidth network. AT&T's IP VPN service operating over its MPLS-enabled core network transformed the company's operations, providing every remote location with 10 times the bandwidth--or 1.5 Mbps--compared to 256Kbps on the Frame Relay network. The company signed a three-year, $2.5 million contract with AT&T.

Deployment began in April, and was completed in August. Chuck Morrow, AT&T's design engineer, says switching to the MPLS network gives Allied Electronics a "bigger yard to play in for its IP applications."

MPLS BENEFITS

MPLS uses digital shorthand to label data packets, allowing network routers to run at faster speeds because they don't need to examine each packet as closely. Because the packets travel over AT&T's own Internet Protocol system, traffic is walled off from the public Internet.

Allied Electronics went from a fractional T1 port to a full T1 port access, which it doesn't have to manage. The difference in the two systems is the payload speed, according to Morrow. "Working on the MPLS network versus the Frame Relay is analogous to having several people sharing a dial-up line versus having a private 2 Mbps cable modem connection," Morrow says. "They [Allied Electronics] experienced immediate improved performance."

And because the MPLS network is an intelligent port, Allied Electronics' tech team can police the port with a higher class of service. They can ensure that the critical order-entry application receives priority over less critical applications such as e-mail or print jobs. "They get a consistent throughput so they don't have less important applications taking up precious company resources," Morrow says.

SEAMLESS DEPLOYMENT

Bruns says the biggest advantage to staying with AT&T was its commitment to handling nearly all aspects of the switching. AT&T committed to working with the local carriers of each remote location, leaving Allied Electronics with a near-effortless deployment project. This came in handy when the local phone company at Allied Electronics' Connecticut location mistakenly turned off service.

"AT&T did some serious intervention and got this repaired within a day-and-a-half," Bruns says. "We're very happy with the service. Since implementing the network, we haven't had an outage associated with installation."

From a core network performance, the MPLS network is at four-nines, Morrow notes, and its IP services just received five-nines this past August.

Bruns says Allied Electronics is now working to roll out a more graphics-based version of its quote entry system to increase sales efficiency. "This new application would not be successful on the slower network," he says.

The company is also considering future options such as VoIP. The MPLS infrastructure can accommodate that enhancement; the legacy Frame Relay network could not. Bruns says he's looking at preliminary plans and "if the numbers work," a proposal to implement VoIP should be drafted by spring 2005.

Until then, Allied Electronics has yet to make full use of the MPLS network. For example, the company still uses a hub-and-spoke topology and isn't interconnecting all of its sites. Bruns says it isn't needed yet, although it could happen once future technologies such as VoIP are implemented.