Leased Lines are symmetric dedicated point-to-point connections. By linking leased lines together it is possible to create a Wide Area Network (WAN) that links multiple sites together.

A common leased line networking topology is 'hub and spoke'. Think of a bicycle wheel. There are a number of locations around the rim that are joined by a spoke to one central point, the hub. Now imagine that the locations around the wheel are your offices, the spokes are leased lines, and the hub is your provider's core network.

Leased line WAN connections enable you to link your business's sites together.

One way to do this would be to give each office a leased line. Each leased line would connect to your WAN provider's nearest point of presence.

Your WAN provider would link the leased lines together - using its core network - in such a way that you could quickly send data between your offices.

Your WAN provider could also add additional services that would increase the usefulness of your wide area network. Internet access is a popular service to add, so too is SIP Trunking.

There are two main ways to link two sites together with a leased line.

One is to use a point-to-point leased line. The other is to use a somewhat more complicated topology.

A virtual leased line is an apparent point-to-point ethernet leased line that uses pseudo-wire encapsulation for transporting Ethernet traffic over an MPLS tunnel across an MPLS core network.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “What’s that in English?”

A Simple Example of a Virtual Leased Line

Imagine that you have two offices. One in London and the other in Reading. You want to join their LANs together with a 10Mbps ethernet leased line.