Greetings all, Would anyone who has every done MLPPP over MPLS care to share their experiences with this type of network? We have a customer that is implementing an MPLS network that will have 2 to 6 T1 feeds at some locations that will be using MLPPP for channel bonding. This is a telco provided network that will be customer managed. The routers will be customer managed because the same equipment will have interfaces to another telco's network as a backup to the MPLS network. Needless to say, no telco will support equipment that interfaces competitors networks. The customer is being told by their router vendor that an MLPPP/MPLS network is 'too complex' to be managed by anyone except for the router vendor's VARs or the telco. They indicated that it would be impossible for the customer's router vendor certified network person to come up to speed on MLPPP/MPLS configurations and manage such a network -- that it takes years to adequately learn how to manage that type of network configuration. This doesn't sound like rocket science to me -- it should be simple and rather straight forward, I would think: The telco specifies its requirements for the router configuration, the customer implements that configuration on the required router interfaces, the telco monitors line quality, and the customer does basic router monitoring. Am I missing something here, or is the router vendor just blowing a lot of smoke to try to provide business for some of his clients that provide managed services? Thanks in advance for your feedback! Jon Kibler -- Jon R. Kibler Chief Technical Officer A.S.E.T., Inc. Charleston, SC USA (843) 849-8214 ================================================== Filtered by: TRUSTEM.COM's Email Filtering Service http://www.trustem.com/ No Spam. No Viruses. Just Good Clean Email.
On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Jon R. Kibler wrote:
We have a customer that is implementing an MPLS network that will have 2 to 6 T1 feeds at some locations that will be using MLPPP for channel bonding. This is a telco provided network that will be customer managed.
It's not clear from your message, but I'm assuming the MLPPP will be from PE to CE and that the MPLS you speak of is MPLS VPN. If that's the case, on the customer end, it's just a MLPPP, and on your end, it's an MLPPP with an "ip vrf forwarding foo" statement. It's probably more than the average CCNA can handle (but so are MLPPP, MPLS, and most day to day IOS config work). Anyone who actually uses IOS on a regular basis (as opposed to someone who crammed for an exam and knows squat) should have no trouble with it.
The customer is being told by their router vendor that an MLPPP/MPLS network is 'too complex' to be managed by anyone except for the router vendor's VARs or the telco. They indicated that it would be impossible for the customer's router vendor certified network person to come up to speed on MLPPP/MPLS configurations and manage such a network -- that it takes years to adequately learn how to manage that type of network configuration.
I think someone may be confusing "providing MPLS service" with "buying MPLS service". A customer buying MPLS VPN service never sees any of the MPLS tags or messes with MPLS/tag-switching commands. There is no added complexity...or at least there doesn't need to be any.
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It may also be worth noting that if the provider is running Juniper and not Cisco, there are fragmentation issues with certain versions of Juniper code. The MLPPP session cannot agree on an MTU and usually stop somewhere around 100 bytes if they do. The workaround is to implement "ppp multilink fragment disable" on the Cisco Multilink interface. Brent Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org> Sent by: owner-nanog@merit.edu 02/17/2006 03:38 PM To "Jon R. Kibler" <Jon.Kibler@aset.com> cc nanog@merit.net Subject Re: MLPPP over MPLS On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Jon R. Kibler wrote:
We have a customer that is implementing an MPLS network that will have 2
to 6 T1 feeds at some locations that will be using MLPPP for channel bonding. This is a telco provided network that will be customer managed.
It's not clear from your message, but I'm assuming the MLPPP will be from PE to CE and that the MPLS you speak of is MPLS VPN. If that's the case, on the customer end, it's just a MLPPP, and on your end, it's an MLPPP with an "ip vrf forwarding foo" statement. It's probably more than the average CCNA can handle (but so are MLPPP, MPLS, and most day to day IOS config work). Anyone who actually uses IOS on a regular basis (as opposed to someone who crammed for an exam and knows squat) should have no trouble with it.
The customer is being told by their router vendor that an MLPPP/MPLS network is 'too complex' to be managed by anyone except for the router vendor's VARs or the telco. They indicated that it would be impossible for the customer's router vendor certified network person to come up to speed on MLPPP/MPLS configurations and manage such a network -- that it takes years to adequately learn how to manage that type of network configuration.
I think someone may be confusing "providing MPLS service" with "buying MPLS service". A customer buying MPLS VPN service never sees any of the MPLS tags or messes with MPLS/tag-switching commands. There is no added complexity...or at least there doesn't need to be any.
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What I heard from Cisco is that there may be some issue with MLPPP and MPLS - maybe QoS? -. The issue is for general IOS support issue for MLPPP/MPLS combination. For that reason, Cisco recommended Multi-link Frame Relay(MLFR) to overcome that issue. Hyun Jon R. Kibler wrote:
Greetings all,
Would anyone who has every done MLPPP over MPLS care to share their experiences with this type of network?
We have a customer that is implementing an MPLS network that will have 2 to 6 T1 feeds at some locations that will be using MLPPP for channel bonding. This is a telco provided network that will be customer managed.
The routers will be customer managed because the same equipment will have interfaces to another telco's network as a backup to the MPLS network. Needless to say, no telco will support equipment that interfaces competitors networks.
The customer is being told by their router vendor that an MLPPP/MPLS network is 'too complex' to be managed by anyone except for the router vendor's VARs or the telco. They indicated that it would be impossible for the customer's router vendor certified network person to come up to speed on MLPPP/MPLS configurations and manage such a network -- that it takes years to adequately learn how to manage that type of network configuration.
This doesn't sound like rocket science to me -- it should be simple and rather straight forward, I would think: The telco specifies its requirements for the router configuration, the customer implements that configuration on the required router interfaces, the telco monitors line quality, and the customer does basic router monitoring. Am I missing something here, or is the router vendor just blowing a lot of smoke to try to provide business for some of his clients that provide managed services?
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Jon Kibler
Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
What I heard from Cisco is that there may be some issue with MLPPP and MPLS - maybe QoS? -. The issue is for general IOS support issue for MLPPP/MPLS combination. For that reason, Cisco recommended Multi-link Frame Relay(MLFR) to overcome that issue.
Hyun
Hyun, Would you happen to have a source for additional information as to exactly what the problem may be? THANKS! Jon Kibler -- Jon R. Kibler Chief Technical Officer A.S.E.T., Inc. Charleston, SC USA (843) 849-8214 ================================================== Filtered by: TRUSTEM.COM's Email Filtering Service http://www.trustem.com/ No Spam. No Viruses. Just Good Clean Email.
Maybe next monday I can ask for detailed info, but I wasn't on the meeting to discuss this in detail. Based on outcome of discussion with Cisco, we decided to go with MLFR instead of MLPPP. Hyun Jon R. Kibler wrote:
Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
What I heard from Cisco is that there may be some issue with MLPPP and MPLS - maybe QoS? -. The issue is for general IOS support issue for MLPPP/MPLS combination. For that reason, Cisco recommended Multi-link Frame Relay(MLFR) to overcome that issue.
Hyun
Hyun,
Would you happen to have a source for additional information as to exactly what the problem may be?
THANKS! Jon Kibler
On 2/17/06, Hyunseog Ryu <r.hyunseog@ieee.org> wrote:
Maybe next monday I can ask for detailed info, but I wasn't on the meeting to discuss this in detail. Based on outcome of discussion with Cisco, we decided to go with MLFR instead of MLPPP.
Any idea if this issue is just another unfixed bug, or is it something deeper?
Hyun
-- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold XenoPhage0@gmail.com
Since PPP doesn't have any way to identify different PVC from physical circuit, MLPPP can not be used for sub-interface required field. For example, if you want to use different VLAN id with dot1q or Frame Relay DLCI, you can not use it with MPLS. Since our customer requires to use multiple VLANs from same physical, we decided not to use MLPPP and to use MLFR for this issue. MLFR has DLCI field, so we can identify mutlple source of a sort of PVC. If you wants to use QoS from MLPPP, you have to disable CEF from the interface. That's another consideration. If you use FlexWan from Cisco 7600 platform, you can not change MTU size for MLPPP/MPLS because of bug CSCdj40945. That problem said it is fixed, but you still need to check your IOS whether it has a fix for this or not. Hyun Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
Maybe next monday I can ask for detailed info, but I wasn't on the meeting to discuss this in detail. Based on outcome of discussion with Cisco, we decided to go with MLFR instead of MLPPP.
Hyun
Jon R. Kibler wrote:
Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
What I heard from Cisco is that there may be some issue with MLPPP and MPLS - maybe QoS? -. The issue is for general IOS support issue for MLPPP/MPLS combination. For that reason, Cisco recommended Multi-link Frame Relay(MLFR) to overcome that issue.
Hyun
Hyun,
Would you happen to have a source for additional information as to exactly what the problem may be?
THANKS! Jon Kibler
I've also heard a variety of comments about difficulties in getting Cisco MLPPP working in MPLS environments, mostly in the past year when our product development people weren't buried in more serious problems (:--) I've got the vague impression that it was more buggy for N>2 than N=2. There are a number of ways to bond NxT1 together, including MLFR and IMA, and we've generally used IMA for ATM and MPLS services and CEF for Internet. IMA has the annoyance of extra ATM overhead, but doesn't have problems with load-balancing or out-of-order delivery, and we've used it long enough to be good at dealing with its other problems.
Overall, MLPPP may work fine with MPLS as long as you have single virtual circuit from each physical circuit. Such as T1 channel from Channelized DS3... But you have to use sub-interface (logical interface) other than sub-channel from channeliezed circuit, you may have some problem. If you want to use QoS with MLPPP, some cases you may have to disable CEF because of side effects. Overall, what I was recommended by Cisco source, is, if possible, to use MLFR instead of MLPPP for MPLS integration. If you need more information, you can contact your local Cisco System Engineer, and he/she will give more information to you. Hyun Bill Stewart wrote:
I've also heard a variety of comments about difficulties in getting Cisco MLPPP working in MPLS environments, mostly in the past year when our product development people weren't buried in more serious problems (:--) I've got the vague impression that it was more buggy for N>2 than N=2. There are a number of ways to bond NxT1 together, including MLFR and IMA, and we've generally used IMA for ATM and MPLS services and CEF for Internet. IMA has the annoyance of extra ATM overhead, but doesn't have problems with load-balancing or out-of-order delivery, and we've used it long enough to be good at dealing with its other problems.
For more specific discussion we can move it over to cisco-nsp but here is a general document on it. http://cco/en/US/products/sw/iosswrel/ps5207/products_feature_guide09186a008... Rodney On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 02:00:01PM -0600, Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
Overall, MLPPP may work fine with MPLS as long as you have single virtual circuit from each physical circuit. Such as T1 channel from Channelized DS3... But you have to use sub-interface (logical interface) other than sub-channel from channeliezed circuit, you may have some problem. If you want to use QoS with MLPPP, some cases you may have to disable CEF because of side effects.
Overall, what I was recommended by Cisco source, is, if possible, to use MLFR instead of MLPPP for MPLS integration.
If you need more information, you can contact your local Cisco System Engineer, and he/she will give more information to you.
Hyun
Bill Stewart wrote:
I've also heard a variety of comments about difficulties in getting Cisco MLPPP working in MPLS environments, mostly in the past year when our product development people weren't buried in more serious problems (:--) I've got the vague impression that it was more buggy for N>2 than N=2. There are a number of ways to bond NxT1 together, including MLFR and IMA, and we've generally used IMA for ATM and MPLS services and CEF for Internet. IMA has the annoyance of extra ATM overhead, but doesn't have problems with load-balancing or out-of-order delivery, and we've used it long enough to be good at dealing with its other problems.
participants (7)
-
Bill Stewart -
Brent A O'Keeffe -
Hyunseog Ryu -
Jason Frisvold -
Jon Lewis -
Jon R. Kibler -
Rodney Dunn