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First Published: June 4, 2010
Last Updated: June 4, 2010
The L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature introduces the following enhancements to Virtual Private LAN Services:
The L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature uses Virtual Switch System (VSS) and Flow Aware Transport (FAT) pseudowires to achieve PE redundancy and load-balancing. The following sections explain the concepts and configuration tasks for this feature.
Your software release may not support all the features documented in this module. For the latest feature information and caveats, see the release notes for your platform and software release. To find information about the features documented in this module, and to see a list of the releases in which each feature is supported, see the Feature Information for L2VPN Advanced VPLS.
Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco IOS and Catalyst OS software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn . An account on Cisco.com is not required.
Other configuration methods, including using the route-via command, BGP autodiscovery, or explicit VLAN assignment to a PE egress port, are not supported.
To configure the L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature, you should understand the following concepts:
FAT pseudowires are used to load-balance traffic in the core when equal cost multipaths are used. The MPLS labels add an additional label to the stack, called the flow label, which contains the flow information of a VC. For more information about FAT pseudowires, see PWE3 Internet-Draft Flow Aware Transport of MPLS Pseudowires (draft-bryant-filsfils-fat-pw).
Two Cisco 6500 series switches can be connected to form one logical switch. One switch is designated as the master, while the other is the slave. The two switches are connected by a virtual switch link (VSL). The two switches are used for link redundancy, load-balancing, and failover.
For more information on virtual switch systems, see Configuring VSS in the Catalyst 6500 Release 12.2SXH and Later Software Configuration Guide
The following sections explain how to configure the L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature:
The following steps explain how to enable load-balancing at the provider edge (PE) routers and on the core routers.
To enable load-balancing on the edge routers, issue the load-balanceflow command. The load-balancing rules are configured through the port-channelload-balance command parameters.
To enable core load-balancing, issue the flow-labelenable command on both PE routers. You must issue the load-balanceflow command with the flow-labelenable command.
The following task explains how to enable port channel load-balancing, which sets the load-distribution method among the ports in the bundle. If the port-channelload-balance command is not configured, load-balancing occurs with default parameters.
There are several ways to specify the route through which traffic should pass.
The following task explains how to explicitly specify the PE routers as part of the virtual Ethernet interface configuration.
Note: This tasks includes steps for configuring the LAN port for Layer 2 Switching. For more information, see Configuring LAN Ports for Layer 2 Switching.
There are several ways to specify the route through which traffic should pass.
The following task explains how to configure an MPLS Traffic Engineering tunnel.
There are several ways to specify the route through which traffic should pass.
The following sections show configuration examples for the three supported methods of configuring the L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature
The following example shows how to create two VPLS domains under VLANs 10 and 20. Each VPLS domain includes two pseudowires to peer PE routers 10.2.2.2 and 10.3.3.3. Load-balancing is enabled through the load-balanceflow and flow-labelenable commands.
pseudowire-class cl1 encap mpls load-balance flow flow-label enable ! port-channel load-balance src-mac ! interface virtual-ethernet 1 transport vpls mesh neighbor 10.2.2.2 pw-class cl1 neighbor 10.3.3.3 pw-class cl1 switchport switchport mode trunk switchport trunk allowed vlan 10, 20
The following example shows the creation of two VPLS domains and uses MPLS Traffic Engineering tunnels to specify the explicit path.
pseudowire-class cl1 encap mpls ! port-channel load-balance src-mac ! interface Tunnel1 ip unnumbered Loopback0 tunnel mode mpls traffic-eng tunnel destination 192.168.1.1 tunnel mpls traffic-eng autoroute announce tunnel mpls traffic-eng path-option 1 explicit name LSP1 ! ip explicit-path name LSP1 enable next-address 192.168.2.2 next-address loose 192.168.1.1 ! interface Tunnel2 ip unnumbered Loopback0 tunnel mode mpls traffic-eng tunnel destination 172.16.1.1 tunnel mpls traffic-eng autoroute announce tunnel mpls traffic-eng path-option 1 explicit name LSP2 ! ip explicit-path name LSP2 enable next-address 172.16.2.2 next-address loose 172.16.1.1 ! interface virtual-ethernet 1 transport vpls mesh neighbor 10.2.2.2 pw-class cl1 neighbor 10.3.3.3 pw-class cl1 switchport switchport mode trunk switchport trunk allowed vlan 10,20
The following example shows the creation of two VPLS domains under VLANs 10 and 20. Each VPLS domain includes two pseudowires to peer PEs 10.2.2.2 and 10.3.3.3. The pseudowires are MPLS over GRE tunnels because the core is IP.
pseudowire-class cl1 encap mpls load-balance flow ! port-channel load-balance src-mac ! int tunnel 1 tunnel mode gre ip mpls ip tunnel source 10.1.1.1 tunnel destination 10.2.2.2 ! int tunnel 2 tunnel mode gre ip mpls ip tunnel source 10.1.1.1 tunnel destination 10.3.3.3 ! interface virtual-ethernet 1 transport vpls mesh neighbor 10.2.2.2 pw-class cl1 neighbor 10.3.3.3 pw-class cl1 switchport switchport mode trunk switchport trunk allowed vlan 10, 20 ip route 10.2.2.2 255.255.255.255 Tunnel1 ip route 10.2.2.2 255.255.255.255 Tunnel2
The following sections provide references related to the L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature.
Related Topic |
Document Title |
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Cisco IOS commands |
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MPLS commands |
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VPLS |
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MPLS Traffic Engineering tunnels |
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GRE tunnels |
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Cisco 6500 LAN ports |
Standard |
Title |
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draft-bryant-filsfils-fat-pw |
I-D: Flow Aware Transport of MPLS Pseudowires (FAT PWs) |
MIB |
MIBs Link |
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To locate and download MIBs for selected platforms, Cisco IOS releases, and feature sets, use Cisco MIB Locator found at the following URL: |
RFC |
Title |
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RFC 4762 |
Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) Using Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) Singling |
Description |
Link |
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The following table provides release information about the feature or features described in this module. This table lists only the software release that introduced support for a given feature in a given software release train. Unless noted otherwise, subsequent releases of that software release train also support that feature.
Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.
Table 1 | Feature Information for L2VPN Advanced VPLS |
Feature Name |
Releases |
Feature Information |
---|---|---|
L2VPN Advanced VPLS |
12.2(33)SXI4 |
L2VPN Advanced VPLS feature uses Virtual Switch System (VSS) and Flow Aware Transport (FAT) pseudowires to achieve PE redundancy and load-balancing. In 12.2(33)SXI4, this feature was introduced on the Cisco 6500 series router. The following commands were introduced: flow-label enable , interfacevirtual-ethernet, load-balanceflow, neighbor(VPLStransportmode), showinterfacevirtual-ethernet, and transportvplsmesh.The following command was modified: showmplsl2transportvc |