[c-nsp] MPLS Suggestion on 7604 Router

[James Bensley]

On 13 November 2016 at 18:51, Lukas Tribus <luky-37 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
>> We are going to deploy 7604 router in our network (replacing 7200 G2).
>
> I would strongly suggest against a 7600 deployment. Its EOL/EOS and its
> extremely expensive if you buy from Cisco.
>
> The ASR9k series is what you should be looking at. With the small ASR9001
> you can already get 4x10GE + 40x1GE or 8x10GE with 20x1GE.
>
> I will assume that you have to re-use in-house 7600 gear or get it *very* cheap.

...

>> We would be implementing VRFs, EoMPLS, VPLS and QoS.


If this is say an edge device that provides "basic" PE features, such
as a L2/L3 LER that it should be OK. If you want HQoS you will hit
some issues andif you want complex EVC operations you might hit some
limits too. If this is basic L2/L3 VPN stuff it should be ok but its
worth noting without putting the full 4GB of RAM in your
RSP720-3CXL-10G it does have long length for holding a full global BGP
table.

As Lukas said these platforms are EOS and EOL, we have 15.3(3)S6
running which you have hinted towards, it is stable and works well for
us. But like Lukas said, unless this is just provide basic PE features
I wouldn't bother to deploy it (or unless it’s basically free, because
that is also a lot of rack space and power to use just for a couple of
10G ports!).


>> we have the following configuration
>>
>> 1. RSP720-3CXL-10GE
>> 2. 76-ES+XC-20G3CXL
>>
>> Now my question is on which port would be better for MPLS Core interface
>> and which would be subscriber facing interface?
>
> First of all, do you even have the option? This ES+ line card only has a single 10G port.
>
> You customer facing ports should definitely be on the ES+ card.
> You core facing ports may be on the RSP; if it supports the features you need.

Yeah the RSP port is useless as a customer facing port unless again
you want the most basic of features, essentially QoS-less L3 VPN edge
or L2 edge, the RSP supports basic queuing and classification and
policing. Its fine for say a core facing LDP port, we use them for
that and haven't had any issues.

Use the ES port if you want some form of HQF.


>> From my understanding, for full feature VPLS we need ES+ line card.
>> (correct me if i am wrong).
>
> To use *all* features, you need ES+ on both sides. Basic EoMPLS, VPLS and MPLS
> L3VPN will probably work if the RSP is core facing.
>
> Read through this document, and carefully test your configurations.
>
> If at all possible, only use ES+ ports even core facing.


We are not running any VPLS services on our 7600s but all L3 VPN
features are working and port-based and sub-int based EoMPLS works,
with the RSP port facing the core. For VPLS I am not sure if this will
work, as Lukas said, testing is critical! With a LAN card facing the
core and ES facing the customer/VPLS access-circuit this won't work I
believe because the LAN card is incapable of imposing the egress MPLS
label in a VPLS scenario. I expect the RSP port would also fail (since
LAN cards are either CFC using the same PFC as the RSP port or DFC and
hold a copy of the same info the DFC does). I think the NP3C is
required to make such a look up and work out which labels need to be
imposed.

Cheers,
James.