MPLS VPN Technology: Implementation of Frame Mode MPLS
MPLS VPN Technology: Implementation of Frame Mode MPLS
MPLS VPN Technology: Implementation of Frame Mode MPLS
VPN Taxonomy
VPN Models
VPN services can be offered based on two major models:
Overlay VPNs, in which the service provider provides virtual point-to-point links between customer sites Peer-to-peer VPNs, in which the service provider participates in the customer routing
The service provider infrastructure appears as point-to-point links to customer routes. Routing protocols run directly between customer routers. The service provider does not see customer routes and is responsible only for providing point-to-point transport of customer data.
Peer-to-Peer VPNs
Peer-to-peer VPN:
The service provider participates in customer routing. The service provider becomes responsible for customer convergence. PE routers carry all routes from all customers. The service provider needs detailed IP routing knowledge.
PE Router Architecture
The number of customer routes can be very large; BGP is the only routing protocol that can scale to such a number.
Route Distinguishers
Question: How will information about the overlapping subnetworks of two customers be propagated via a single routing protocol? Answer: Extend the customer addresses to make them unique. The 64-bit RD is prepended to an IPv4 address to make it globally unique. The resulting address is a VPNv4 address. VPNv4 addresses are exchanged between PE routers via BGP. BGP that supports address families other than IPv4 addresses is called multiprotocol BGP (MPBGP).
Requirements:
All sites of one customer need to communicate. Central sites of both customers need to communicate with VoIP gateways and other central sites.
Other sites from different customers do not communicate with each other.
Route Targets
Some sites have to participate in more than one VPN. The RD cannot identify participation in more than one VPN. RTs were introduced in the MPLS VPN architecture to support complex VPN topologies. RTs are additional attributes attached to VPNv4 BGP routes to indicate VPN membership.
The CE routers run standard IP routing software and exchange routing updates with the PE router. The PE router appears as another router in the C-network.
To the customer, the PE routers appear as core routers connected via a BGP backbone. The usual BGP and IGP design rules apply. The P routers are hidden from the customer.
The PE routers will label the VPN packets with a label stack, as follows:
Using the LDP label for the egress PE router as the top label Using the VPN label assigned by the egress PE router as the second label in the stack
VPN PHP
Summary
There are two major VPN paradigms: overlay VPN and peerto-peer VPN. MPLS VPN architecture combines the best features of the overlay and peer-to-peer VPN models. BGP is used to exchange customer routes between PE routers. Routes are transported using IGP (internal core routes), BGP IPv4 (core Internet routes), and BGP VPNv4 (PE-to-PE VPN routes). PE routers forward packets across the MPLS VPN backbone using label stacking.