[c-nsp] VRF-Lite Question

[Ray Burkholder]

> >> Which begs the question, *is* there an officially 
> supported method of transport between a 3550/3560/3750 CE and 
> a non-directly connected PE?  
> >>
> > 
> > That's fine for single point-to-point hub-and-spoke, but gets 
> > downright ugly if you're trying to setup an L3 mesh.
> 
> > 
> > OK, here's a real-life example... a stack of 4 3750s with 4 
> VRFs spread
> > across them (OOB network management/monitoring, system 
> admin, back-end
> > databases, and public/DMZ) to uplink to redundant 6509 PEs. 
>  What's the
> 
> Lots of per-VRF L3 point-to-points, routing processes and routing 
> adjacencies is the only working method on non-MPLS capable routers.
> 
> It's tedious, but then the 3550/3750s are cheap.
> 
Just to refine the scenario.  You have four buildings.  Cisco standard
practice recommends layer 3 separation between buildings.  There are four
vrf's in each building, with traffic on like vrf's needing to go building to
building.  And for sake of argument, a mesh of 1 pair fibres between
buildings.  The switches on either end of each fibre link is a
3550/3560/3750.

The way I've handled this in the past is a routed l3 port on each end of the
fibre on the switch, and drop that into the global routing table.  Then
I've done GRE tunnels across that link, with source and destination in the
global routing table and the tunnel itself in the appropriate vrf.  Four
vrf's, four tunnels per link.

Other list members have indicated that GRE tunnels are not supported nor
recommended.  

So.... What is the solution for interbuilding links?  Will the 35xx series
support mpls labelling for one hop links?  Is that a possible mechanism?
Any other suggestions?



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