[c-nsp] Low end MPLS question

[Jason Lixfeld]

On 26-Oct-04, at 1:35 PM, Krzysztof Adamski wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Jason Lixfeld wrote:
>
>> Do you care what the link looks like to the customer?  Do they want it
>> to look like an ethernet link which passes VTP, spanning-tree, etc or
>> does that not matter?
>
> In a perfect world I would like to pass all that traffic, but I can  
> live
> without it.

Then you'd want to do EoMPLS or Layer2 MPLS VPNs.

>>
>> SwitchA and SwitchB are customer owned/operated or provider
>> owned/operated?
>
> It would be operated by me (the provider)

Were you at the Tech Symposium a few weeks back?  David Jirku did a  
presentation entitled "MPLS: Advanced Concepts and Developments".  The  
slides are at http://www.cisco.com/ca/techsymp2004/presentations/   
Check out page 62 of that presentation.  It illustrates a feature  
called VRF Lite (Multi-VRF).  From the looks of it, you can use a 1700  
(http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps380/ 
prod_bulletin09186a0080107ce5.html) with a VLAN capable switch to map  
vlans to VRFs.

It looks like there is a drawback, however.  The diagram on Page 64  
seems to imply that the transport between the CE and PE can physically  
separate the VRFs (by way of PTP sub interfaces over a T/E1).  Whether  
or not you can do that over a single PPPoE session, I don't  know.

I'm no expert on any of this though -- so correct me if I'm way off in  
left field.

>>
>> 3750 with Advanced IP Feature Set will do MPLS, EoMPLS and MPLS VPNs.
>> Might be overkill if this is going to be plugged into the back of a  
>> DSL
>> link though.
>>
>> 800 Series CPEs can do remote access to MPLS VPNs, but that feature  
>> set
>> may not be flexible enough to act as a proper PE so you may need to go
>> up to a 1700/2600.
>
> The price is very important, since the alternative is to run few  
> separate
> routers, each doing a PPPoE, but that does not scale very well when  
> adding
> new networks.

If it works, VRF Lite is going to be rather expensive may be more  
expensive because it looks like you can only do VRF Lite, on a 1700,  
minimum.

Looking at it again, I don't think Remote Access MPLS is going to do  
what you want.  It looks to be more of a service provider solution,  
rather than a wholesaler solution.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns341/ns396/ns172/ns126/ 
networking_solutions_package.html

and Page 71 of Jirku's presentation goes over Remote Access MPLS (VRF  
Select).

>> Is this "mini MPLS network" something that will be put into production
>> as-is, or is this something that's just a proof of concept and the
>> actual roll-out will look very different?
>
> This is as close the the production as I could make it with out over
> complicated my diagram. The backend (ie switchB) is the only place  
> where
> there would be changes.

...

I'm not sure how you can do it.  If the CE can label the packets,  
regardless of the transport, you should be golden but I don't think you  
can find that flexibility in an 800 Series CPE.

What's the goal here?  What's on the LAN side of Switch A and the LAN  
side of switch B that you are trying to interconnect?

>>
>> On 26-Oct-04, at 11:28 AM, Krzysztof Adamski wrote:
>>
>>> I have been asked to design a mini MPLS network running on ADSL links
>>> with PPPoE, it should look like this:
>>>
>>> switchA -- routerA --- PPPoE ------ LNS --- switchB
>>>              ------------ MPLS ------
>>>
>>> Let me explain, each port on switchA would be a separate network that
>>> would connect to a corresponding port on switchB. There may be IP
>>> overlap
>>> between networks.
>>>
>>> My two questions are, is this possible, and what equipment would I  
>>> use
>>> for
>>> switchA and routerA?
>>>
>>> I know I can do something similar with multiple routers, each having  
>>> a
>>> separate PPPoE connection and multihop on the LNS side, but I don't
>>> want
>>> to have ~10 routers instead of routerA.
>>>
>>> K
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
>>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
>>> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
>>
>