United India Insurance Company-MPLS-VPN

They have created a better, more reliable and secure network using MPLS-VPN
to acieve branch office networking and automation. They now look forward to have
core insurance solution.

The MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching)-VPN at United India Insurance Co (UIIC)
follows the hub-and-spoke network model-the company's Chennai office, which is
its head office, is the hub and nearly 1,000 other sites are spokes. Each office
is connected to the MPLS cloud through leased lines. At HO and NAPs (network
aggregation points), they have used two links in active-active mode to the BSNL
cloud. The last mile at the head office and the NAPs are optical fiber. The
reliability at branch offices is taken care of by providing ISDN BRI backup to
the leased line last mile.

The network core consists of the data center, which hosts all the business as
well as productivity applications such as messaging and voice. This is connected
to the WAN core, which is on the BSNL MPLS network on high-speed optical WAN
links. UIIC has partnered BSNL for MPLS. The distribution layer consists of the
NAPs, which are the main aggregations points for the branches located in that
city or region. These locations have been connected to the MPLS WAN on redundant
load balanced high-speed WAN links provisioned on optical fiber circuits to
ensure necessary uptime and scalability. The access layer comprises all the
branches and their associated LANs, which provide users access to the
applications hosted at the datacenter.

	Project Specs Business problem: Needed a robust network infrastructure for centralization of branch office date IT solution: Using the MPLS cloud of BSNL, they have created a VPN Impact: The system has improved the service level significantly. Implementation partner: BSNL, HCL Comnet
B Rajaram, Manager-IT, UIIC

The branches will connect either to the MPLS PoP directly or to the aggregation locations on 64 Kbps. The choice of
termination for the branches is decided based on their distance from the nearest
NAP. Delivering the network to the remote branches was a big challenge, but UIIC
has been able to do it in time. The implementation was divided into three
overlapping phases- head office and NAPs (four months from placement of PO), A/B
class cities (five months), and the remaining branches (seven months). After
connecting the head office and NAPs, the core team trained people there to carry
on the networking in their respective regions. Once an office gets connected,
it's given an IP phone to facilitate communications regarding IP migrations and
other issues. Monitoring, management, and security was done by HCL Comnet.