USCom's objectives for its network design include the following considerations:
Ensure that the Layer 3 MPLS VPN design can cope with current scale requirements as well as the predicted growth of this service over the coming years.
Enrich the Layer 3 MPLS VPN service with quality of service commitments, allowing it to be marketed as the service of choice for enterprises that want to converge their data/voice/video networks onto a single multimedia intranet.
Offer high-availability commitments to VPN users without additional capital expenses.
The following sections review the design elected by USCom, as well as the corresponding rationale behind the routing, Layer 3 MPLS VPN, QoS, traffic engineering, and network recovery. A final section points out a number of lessons that can be drawn from the USCom design.