[c-nsp] FW: L2 network - MPLS question

[Rick Martin]

I realize that this is not specifically a Cisco question but I have googled and have not come up with an answer, I know of no better pool of knowledge than this group so here goes.

 We have a statewide network and we are significantly upgrading bandwidth to customer sites, all connections on this network are Ethernet L2 P2P, a VLAN goes from vendor to  customer site, several vlans are aggregated at the vendor and sent on to our aggregation location on 10Gbps circuits. Customer site WAN link may be anywhere from 100Mbps up to 3 or 4 Gbps based on size of the location.

We are deploying Catalyst 3650;s with ASA's at the customer sites, using Nexus 9504's for our aggregation sites. All hardware was spec'd by Cisco, this was a very big deal and they brought in MANY Cisco internal resources to come up with the design and BOM.

 A particular customer site is receiving upgrade to 1Gbps WAN connection. When we brought this customer up on the new bandwidth the response was slow. We had vendor come out and run tests using their JDSU devices. From the results of that test I am convinced that *using this tool* they can see 1Gbps of throughput from customer site to our aggregation site.

 Customer experience is still poor, we have learned that using iperf or other download based speed testing tools we see a maximum of about 150Mbps download or upload speed.  If we configure the tools to use multiple threads we can see the WAN connection support full 1Gbps throughput.

We have other smaller (100Mbps and 250Mbps) connections from this vendor on the same 10Gbps aggregation circuit that will support the purchased bandwidth on a single thread speed test. We are also successful using this same speed test in hitting full 1Gbps results on other vendor connections. 

 As mentioned above from our perspective this is a L2 service but we understand the reality that there is probably vendor MPLS in the middle and that is where my question lies;

In an MPLS environment as described can the service provider configure a per flow bandwidth limit? 

 We are trying to hold the vendor's feet to the fire but it is difficult when the tools that they use show good results. I have left multiple voice mails with our vendor SE and they have not been returned...imagine that!

Thanks in advance for any input any of you may have, it will be truly appreciated!

rick

Rick Martin
Network Architect
State of Arkansas, Department of Information Systems
(501) 682-4037