[j-nsp] Juniper EX4550 load balancing of MPLS traffic

[Mark Tinka]

On 2/Jun/15 20:54, Luis Balbinot wrote:
> Hi.
>
> If I have two EX4550s acting as P routers and they are connected by a
> LAG how will the MPLS traffic be load balanced? How deep will the
> hashing algorithm look into the packets?
>
> Juniper says these EXs cannot do MPLS and ECMP. Is this still true?

We used the EX4550's as core switches back in 2012 - 2014, before
migrating to another platform.

They are able to hash Layer 2 traffic that is primarily MPLS-based. This
was a major requirement for us because I've had bad experience with the
EX4200 acting as a core switch where Ethernet payload is MPLS traffic.

I've never ran MPLS on any EX box, but the EX4550 can certainly load
balance Ethernet traffic if the payload is MPLS. It will look deep
enough and hash against the payload that MPLS is carrying.

Just don't try this on the EX4200. The EX4200 only supports hashing
against IP and Ethernet traffic. Not sure what the newer EX switches can do.

Mark.