Transparent LAN Service (TLS) is a service from a carrier linking together remote

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

networks. It is called "transparent" because the connected networks are viewed as one contiguous network by the customer, regardless of the deployed technology by the carrier in between. Its primary real world deployment is usually limited to corporations who 1) require remote office or back-end

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

connectivity at close to

LAN Lan or LAN may refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in space * ...

speed, and 2) do not have in-house expertise in

WAN WAN or Wan may refer to: Language * Wan language of the Ivory Coast * 万/萬 (Pinyin: Wàn), 10,000 in Chinese People * Wan (surname) ( and ), a Chinese surname * Wan (surname 溫), an alternative spelling for the Chinese surname Wen (溫) * ...

management, as TLS is usually purchased as a fully managed service (meaning the carrier chosen owns, configures, monitors, and maintains the equipment needed for the service to function). The availability of TLS service depends on the carrier's underlying network architecture. In most cases, it is only available in large metropolitan areas and office buildings, campuses, or data centers large enough to warrant the proper equipment. Transparent

service between two sites has been successful, but multi-point transparent LANs have been problematic due to the difference in architecture between the broadcast-based Ethernet and the carrier's point-to-point network. The

VPLS Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is a way to provide Ethernet-based multipoint to multipoint communication over IP or MPLS networks. It allows geographically dispersed sites to share an Ethernet broadcast domain by connecting sites through p ...

(a type of

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

) standard was developed to resolve the problem using IP and

MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses. Whereas network addresses identify endpoints, the labels identi ...

routers.

References

Ethernet Data transmission {{compu-network-stub