[j-nsp] [c-nsp] LACP between router VMs (James Bensley)

[adamv0025 at netconsultings.com]

Hey,

> local link and not forwarded by the soft bridge by default (I do not know of
> any hardware bridges that allow you to disabled this restriction, if you know
> of any I would be interested.  
>
My understanding is that Carrier-Ethernet grade switches/routers should allow you to peer/drop/tunnel/forward L2 protocols. 
If you're in be business long enough you may remember migrations from leased-lines to frame-relay and then from FR to MPLS and then from L3VPNs to L2VPNs to complete the circle. 
These L2 services especially the point-to-point ones, that's where customers pretty much expect the same properties as they used to have in leased-lines or FR services, basically just a pipe where MTU is not an issue and can transport anything from L2 up so they can run their own MPLS/DC networks over these pipes. 
    
> 
> Out of curiosity what is your use case that you need to use LACP to
> communicate with VMs?
> 
Large scale ISP network simulations (for proof of concept testing of various designs/migrations/etc).
This allows me to verify my designs, how the technology works on selected code versions -if there are any bugs, interworking between vendors. 
And there are the provisioning and network monitoring systems, new SDN approaches that can be tested in this virtual environment, you name it.   
Since it's all virtual one can simulate complete networks rather than scaled down slices used in physical labs, so I can see the effects of topology-based route-reflection in terms of routes distribution, the effects of node or link failures on traffic-engineering and possible congestion as a result across the whole backbone all in 1:1 scale, but the important point is to make the simulated control-plane as close to reality as possible hence the need for LACP.
 
Speaking of scale, the fact that the VFP is always at 100% CPU is not helping -reminds me of the good old Dynamips -but at least there you could fix it with an idle value. 
Having hundreds of these VNFs running is not very green. 
 

adam