Cisco ME 3800x and ME 3600x Switches Software Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS Release 15.4(3)S

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Updated:
June 7, 2018

Chapter: MPLS Traffic Engineering Bundled Interface Support

MPLS Traffic Engineering Bundled Interface Support

First Published: November 2013

 

The MPLS Traffic engineering (TE) Bundled Interface Support feature enables Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) traffic engineering tunnels over the bundled interfaces EtherChannel.

The Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) notifies TE about bandwidth changes that occur when member links are added or deleted, or when links become active or inactive. TE notifies other nodes in the network through IGP flooding. By default, the bandwidth available to TE label switched path (LSP) is 75% of the interface bandwidth. You can change the percentage of the global bandwidth available for TE LSPs by using an RSVP command on the bundled interface. Bandwidth reservation and preemption are supported.

The Fast Reroute (FRR) feature is supported on the bundled interfaces. FRR is activated when a bundled interface goes down. For example, if you enter the shut command to shut down the interface, or fewer than the required minimum number of links are operational.

Finding Feature Information

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 MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support” section.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

Contents

Prerequisites for MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

  • Configure MPLS TE tunnels
  • Enable Cisco Express Forwarding in global configuration mode
  • Enable RSVP
  • Configure EtherChannel

Restrictions for MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

  • Although MPLS TE can be enabled over Service Virtual Interfaces (SVI), TE-FRR is not supported on SVIs.
  • There must be a valid IP address configuration on the bundled interface and there must not be an IP address configuration on the member links.

Information About MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

Cisco EtherChannel Overview

Cisco EtherChannel technology builds upon standards-based 802.3 full-duplex Fast Ethernet to provide network managers with a reliable, high-speed solution for the campus network backbone. EtherChannel technology provides bandwidth scalability within the campus by providing up to 800 Mbps, 8 Gbps, or 80 Gbps of aggregate bandwidth for a Fast EtherChannel, Gigabit EtherChannel, or 10 Gigabit EtherChannel connection, respectively. Each of these connection speeds can vary in amounts equal to the speed of the links used (100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, or 10 Gbps). Even in the most bandwidth-demanding situations, EtherChannel technology helps aggregate traffic and keep oversubscription to a minimum, while providing effective link-resiliency mechanisms.

Cisco EtherChannel Benefits

Cisco EtherChannel technology allows network managers to provide higher bandwidth among servers, routers, and switches than single-link Ethernet technology can provide.

Cisco EtherChannel technology provides incremental scalable bandwidth and the following benefits:

  • Standards-based—Cisco EtherChannel technology builds upon IEEE 802.3-compliant Ethernet by grouping multiple, full-duplex point-to-point links. EtherChannel technology uses IEEE 802.3 mechanisms for full-duplex autonegotiation and autosensing, when applicable.
  • Flexible incremental bandwidth—Cisco EtherChannel technology provides bandwidth aggregation in multiples of 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, or 10 Gbps, depending on the speed of the aggregated links. For example, network managers can deploy EtherChannel technology that consists of pairs of full-duplex Fast Ethernet links to provide more than 400 Mbps between the wiring closet and the data center. In the data center, bandwidths of up to 800 Mbps can be provided between servers and the network backbone to provide large amounts of scalable incremental bandwidth.
  • Load balancing—Cisco EtherChannel technology comprises several Fast Ethernet links and is capable of load balancing traffic across those links. Unicast, broadcast, and multicast traffic is evenly distributed across the links, providing improved performance and redundant parallel paths. When a link fails, traffic is redirected to the remaining links within the channel without user intervention and with minimal packet loss.
  • Resiliency and fast convergence—When a link fails, Cisco EtherChannel technology provides automatic recovery by redistributing the load across the remaining links. When a link fails, Cisco EtherChannel technology redirects traffic from the failed link to the remaining links in less than one second. This convergence is transparent to the end user--no host protocol timers expire, so no sessions are dropped.

Load Balancing and Min-Links in EtherChannel

Load balancing affects the actual and practical bandwidth that can be used for TE. Multilink load balancing uses a per-packet load balancing method. All of the bundle interface bandwidth is available. EtherChannel load balancing has various load balancing methods, depending on the traffic pattern and the load balancing configuration. The total bandwidth available for TE may be limited to the bandwidth of a single member link.

Note If port-channel min-links condition is not met, fast reroute (FRR) is triggered.

On EtherChannel, min-link is supported only in the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP). For other EtherChannel protocols, the minimum is one link, by default, and it is not configurable. To configure min-link for EtherChannel, use the port-channel min-links command.

How to Configure MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

Configuring MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

DETAILED STEPS

Command or Action
Purpose

Step 1

enable

 

Router> enable

Enables privileged EXEC mode.

  • Enter your password if prompted.

Step 2

configure terminal

 

Router# configure terminal

Enters global configuration mode.

Step 3

interface port-channel number [ name-tag ]

 

Router(config)# interface multilink 1

Creates a multilink bundle, assigns a group number to the bundle, and enters interface configuration mode.

Step 4

ip address ip-address mask [ secondary ]

 

Router(config-if)# ip address 10.0.0.7 255.255.255.0

Specifies an IP address for the multilink group.

Step 5

mpls traffic-eng tunnels

 

Router(config-if)# mpls traffic-eng tunnels

Enables MPLS traffic engineering tunnel signaling on an interface (assuming that it is enabled on the device).

Step 6

multilink-group group-number

 

Router(config-if)# multilink-group 1

Restricts a physical link to joining only a designated multilink-group interface.

Step 7

ip rsvp bandwidth [ interface-kbps ] [ single-flow-kbps ]

 

Router(config-if)# ip rsvp bandwidth 100

Enables RSVP for IP on an interface and specifies a percentage of the total interface bandwidth as available in the RSVP bandwidth pool.

Step 8

keepalive [ period [ retries ]]

 

Router(config-if)# keepalive 3

Enables keepalive packets and specifies the number of times that the Cisco IOS software tries to send keepalive packets without a response before bringing down the interface or before bringing the tunnel protocol down for a specific interface.

Step 9

end

 

Router(config-if)# end

Returns to global configuration mode.

Configuring MPLS TE on an EtherChannel Interface

DETAILED STEPS

Command or Action
Purpose

Step 1

enable

 

Router> enable

Enables privileged EXEC mode.

  • Enter your password if prompted.

Step 2

configure terminal

 

Router# configure terminal

Enters global configuration mode.

Step 3

interface port-channel number [ name-tag ]

 

Router(config)# interface port-channel4

Creates a multilink bundle, assigns a group number to the bundle, and enters interface configuration mode.

Step 4

ip address ip-address mask [ secondary ]

 

Router(config-if)# ip address 10.0.0.7 255.255.255.0

Specifies an IP address for the multilink group.

Step 5

mpls traffic-eng tunnels

 

Router(config-if)# mpls traffic-eng tunnels

Enables MPLS traffic engineering tunnel signaling on an interface (assuming that it is enabled on the device).

Step 6

port-channel min-links min-num

 

Router(config-if)# port-channel min-links 2

Specifies that a minimum number of bundled ports in an EtherChannel is required before the channel can be active.

Step 7

ip rsvp bandwidth [ interface-kbps ] [ single-flow-kbps ]

 

Router(config-if)# ip rsvp bandwidth 100

Enables RSVP for IP on an interface and specifies a percentage of the total interface bandwidth as available in the RSVP bandwidth pool.

Step 8

end

 

Router(config-if)# end

Returns to global configuration mode.

Configuration Examples for MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

Configuring MPLS TE on an EtherChannel Interface: Example

The following example is a portion of the running-configuration that shows the configuration on the MPLS TE on EtherChannel interface:

interface Port-channel4
no switchport
ip address 64.1.1.1 255.255.255.0
ip router isis
mpls ip
mpls label protocol ldp
mpls traffic-eng tunnels
mpls traffic-eng backup-path Tunnel50
ip rsvp bandwidth
ip rsvp signalling hello
end

Additional References

Standards

Standard
Title

No new or modified standards are supported by this feature, and support for existing standards has not been modified by this feature.

—

MIBs

MIB
MIBs Link
  • No new or modified MIBs are supported by this feature, and support for existing MIBs has not been modified by this feature.

To locate and download MIBs for selected platforms, Cisco software releases, and feature sets, use Cisco MIB Locator found at the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/go/mibs

RFCs

RFC
Title

No new or modified RFCs are supported by this feature, and support for existing RFCs has not been modified by this feature.

—

Technical Assistance

Description
Link

The Cisco Support and Documentation website provides online resources to download documentation, software, and tools. Use these resources to install and configure the software and to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues with Cisco products and technologies. Access to most tools on the Cisco Support and Documentation website requires a Cisco.com user ID and password.

http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/support/index.html

Feature Information for MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and software image support. Cisco Feature Navigator enables you to determine which software images support a specific software release, feature set, or platform. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to http://www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

Note Table 59-1 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.

 

Table 59-1 Feature Information for MPLS TE Bundled Interface Support

Feature Name
Releases
Feature Information

MPLS TE: Bundled Interface Support

Cisco IOS 15.4(1)S

Cisco IOS-XE 3.11.0

This feature was introduced.

The MPLS TE: Bundled Interface Support feature enables MPLS traffic engineering (TE) tunnels over the bundled interfaces EtherChannel.

Glossary

bundle —A group of interfaces that comprise an aggregate interface; for example, EtherChannel.

Cisco Express Forwarding —A means for accelerating the forwarding of packets within a router, by storing route lookup information in several data structures instead of in a route cache.

EtherChannel —EtherChannel is a trunking technology that groups multiple full-duplex 802.3 Ethernet interfaces to provide fault-tolerant high-speed links between switches, routers, and servers. EtherChannel is a logical aggregation of multiple Ethernet interfaces. EtherChannel forms a single higher bandwidth routing or bridging endpoint.

Fast EtherChannel —Fast EtherChannel is a technology-leveraging, standards-based Fast Ethernet that provides the additional bandwidth network backbones require today. It provides flexible, scalable bandwidth with resiliency and load sharing across links for switches, router interfaces, and servers. It supports up to eight links per channel.

Gigabit EtherChannel —Gigabit EtherChannel is high-performance Ethernet technology that provides gigabit per second transmission rates. It provides flexible, scalable bandwidth with resiliency and load sharing across links for switches, router interfaces, and servers. It supports up to eight links per channel.

member link —An interface that is part of a bundle.

min-links —Minimum number of links in an MLP bundle.

MPLS —Multiprotocol Label Switching. Switching method that forwards IP traffic using a label. This label instructs the routers and the switches in the network where to forward the packets based on preestablished IP routing information.

PPP —Point-to-Point Protocol. A successor to SLIP that provides router-to-router and host-to-network connections over synchronous and asynchronous circuits. PPP was designed to work with several network layer protocols (such as IP, IPX, and ARA). PPP also has built-in security mechanisms (such as CHAP and PAP). PPP relies on two protocols: LCP and NCP.

RSVP —Resource Reservation Protocol. Protocol that supports the reservation of resources across an IP network. Applications running on IP end systems can use RSVP to indicate to other nodes the nature (bandwidth, jitter, maximum burst, and so on) of the packet streams they want to receive. RSVP depends on IPv6. Also known as Resource Reservation Setup Protocol.

traffic engineering —Techniques and processes that cause routed traffic to travel through the network on a path other than the one that would have been chosen if standard routing methods were used.

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1721R)

Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and phone numbers used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses and phone numbers. Any examples, command display output, network topology diagrams, and other figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses or phone numbers in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.

© 2014 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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