[j-nsp] Mixed Cisco/Juniper MPLS network

[Eric Van Tol]

Hi all,
We've had MPLS running on our network for years using JUNOS and until only very recently, we haven't had to deal with any of our Cisco equipment needing MPLS.  That changed when we started purchasing ME3600X switches so we could provide VPN services in our metro fiber rings.

I'm trying to wrap my head around how other people handle the label filtering in Cisco-world.  As you know, JUNOS will only advertise a label for the local loopback, but IOS will advertise anything it has a destination to.  Because of this, we've had to implement label filtering on the Cisco switches.  While this works, it seems kind of cumbersome, especially when we need to add a new MPLS-capable device to the network, a prefix-list has to be updated.  If a non-MPLS device is added, another prefix-list has to be updated.  

Is this the normal way of doing things, or is there something I am missing?  I suppose we could assign a certain range of addresses out of our loopback subnet to be used solely for non-MPLS devices, but what happens when one day we need to add MPLS capabilities via a license or an entire hardware replacement?

Any ideas or clue-bats upside the head would be appreciated.

THanks,
evt