On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Michael Dillon <wavetossed@googlemail.com> wrote:
Do you know of any "vpn exchange point" implementations please? -I mean something like IXP but for mpls vpns
Let's say I'm an ISP that bought or merged with many small ISPs each with it's own AS# and would like to start offering mpls vpn services end to end
In the MPLS world, this type of interconnect is called NNI (Network to Network Interconnect)
hey look frame-relay! (joking, sorta, not really) In almost all cases this is still done via the A version (or 1 version of 4) mpls interconnect types where each customer VPN is broken down to native-IP links (vlans most often I believe, sometimes frame dlcis! :)) and the contracted cos/qos setup is replicated on the adjacent provider's interface as well... as you (michael) pointed out though, it's pretty much only done for 'i dont want to build in XXX' places. Additionally, from my (admittedly limited involvement) understanding these sorts of connections are notoriously problematic, painful and ultimately expensive for the provider(s) in question :( boo.
and it needs to take into account things like COS mappings. I don't know of anyone doing this as an exchange, But I imagine that if you had a router with a private ASN, you could always do NNI with a different ASN on each port and therefore, achieve something analogous to an IXP.
the real question is why? what's the business driver? what's the support model? is it truly worthwhile? -chris