MPLS renewal quotes tend to raise eyebrows. Especially when you compare them to what a standard business internet connection delivers today. The requirements at most sites are straightforward: POS systems, CCTV, maybe some VoIP. Do you really need dedicated carrier circuits for that?
Many multi-site businesses are asking themselves this question. How do you connect locations cost-effectively without sacrificing reliability? This article compares the options: traditional MPLS, SD-WAN and simpler VPN alternatives.
MPLS: Still the Gold Standard?
MPLS has its place. The carrier provides a dedicated circuit with guaranteed bandwidth and defined latency. Failover between sites is handled by the provider. For time-critical applications like VoIP or real-time production control, this still matters.
The downsides are well known:
- Cost: Often €500–1,500 per site per month, depending on bandwidth and contract length
- Contract terms: Three to five years is standard, early termination is expensive
- Provisioning: Weeks to months, especially for new connections
- Flexibility: Bandwidth upgrades require contract amendments
For a business with stable locations and critical real-time applications, MPLS can still make sense. For typical retail or petrol station chains running POS and CCTV, it's often overkill.
SD-WAN: Flexible, But Complex
SD-WAN promises the best of both worlds: use any internet connection, manage centrally, route intelligently. Reality often looks different.
Running SD-WAN yourself requires:
- Hardware: Appliances at every site, often €500–2,000 per device
- Licences: Most vendors charge per seat or per feature. Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, VMware VeloCloud - all have their own models
- Expertise: Network engineers who know the platform
- Monitoring: 24/7 oversight, incident response, firmware updates
A mid-sized company with 50 sites easily reaches €100,000 in upfront costs and €50,000 in annual licence fees. Plus at least one full-time network engineer.
Managed SD-WAN from carriers solves the operations problem but often brings the same contract lock-in as MPLS.
The Hybrid Approach: What We Do Differently
We asked ourselves: what does a typical multi-site business actually need?
The answer:
- Secure connectivity between sites
- Automatic failover
- Monitoring
- Someone to take care of it
What they don't need:
- Application-aware routing
- WAN optimisation
- Deep packet inspection at every site
The Last Mile: Your Circuits
First difference: we don't provide circuits. You use whatever is available locally. Fibre, cable, LTE, Starlink - doesn't matter. You control bandwidth and cost for the last mile.
The benefits:
- No carrier lock-in
- Local providers are often cheaper than national carriers
- Upgrade bandwidth without changing your contract with us
- Difficult locations? Starlink or LTE as fallback
Our Backbone, Close to Your Sites
The CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) at your site builds an IPSec tunnel to our nearest POP. From there, traffic runs over our IP/MPLS backbone.
We operate POPs in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Helsinki and Singapore - plus several more locations across Germany. Traffic between your sites doesn't traverse the public internet. It runs over our own infrastructure (AS215197). From our POP onwards, we guarantee latency and availability - like a traditional MPLS provider.
Dual-Homing for Critical Sites
If a site has two internet connections, we terminate at two different POPs. One POP fails, the other takes over. One circuit fails, traffic routes via the second. Full redundancy, without you having to manage it.
IPSec and the MTU Problem
IPSec is proven, standardised, understood by every firewall. But it has overhead. The ESP header (Encapsulating Security Payload) takes space. With a standard MTU of 1500 bytes, roughly 1400 bytes remain for payload after IPSec overhead.
Sounds like detail. Causes regular problems. Large packets get fragmented, some applications don't handle this well. Especially with PPPoE connections that already have reduced MTU (1492 bytes), it gets tight.
Our solution: we adjust TCP MSS clamping to 1400 bytes - without you touching your devices or applications. Sounds trivial. Saves hours of troubleshooting.
What Does It Cost?
Taking our 50-site example:
| 50 sites × €69/month | €3,450 |
| Bandwidth: ~200 Mbps aggregate (95th percentile) | €200 |
| 5 critical sites with redundancy (+€40) | €200 |
| Monthly total | €3,850 |
| Annual | ~€46,000 |
Plus a one-time €200 setup per site (€10,000 total). Internet circuits are paid directly to local providers - averaging €50–100 per site depending on bandwidth.
For comparison: the proposed MPLS renewal was over €150,000 annually.
What Is 95th Percentile Billing?
Short version: we measure bandwidth every 5 minutes. At month end, we sort the measurements and discard the top 5 percent. The highest remaining value is your billing basis.
In practice:
- Short spikes - nightly backups, Windows updates, one-off transfers - don't count
- You pay for sustained usage, not outliers
- With 30 days, 5 percent equals roughly 36 hours - that's your headroom
This is standard practice for datacentres and ISPs. Prefer predictable costs? We offer flat-rate plans too.
Who Is This For?
This works for businesses that:
- Need to connect many sites (typically 3–500)
- Don't have real-time requirements like production control
- Don't want to build an in-house network team
- Need flexibility with locations (new openings, closures)
Typical customers: retail chains, petrol station operators, restaurant chains, property management, healthcare with distributed practices.
Not a fit: if you need SLA-guaranteed latency under 10ms or complex QoS requirements. Traditional MPLS is the better choice there.
Next Steps
Interested?
Send us an email with the approximate number of sites and a brief description of your current network setup. We'll analyse your requirements and put together a proposal.