MPLS Protocol & Services
Interoperability Event
SUPERCOMM 2002

Slide 1MPLS Offering
Service/Network Characteristics
The relevant MPLS featuresdesired by End-user or Service Provider
Low connection loss/ packet loss
Traffic Engineering (TE) feature whichallows for multiple Explicit Routes (ER) for
the same source-destination for fast
restoration
Low jitter, Low latency
TE/ERSecurity
MPLS VPN support – with the caveat that
there is no encryption
Control of traffic distribution
TE/ER to route around congested shortest
paths
Independence from layer 2 (coMPLS architecture
existence of IP, FR, ATM, Opticalnetworks)
Co-existence of MPLS and non-MPLS MPLS architecture
networks
Various service levels e.g. Gold etc.
Service QOS guarantees using TE,
Differentiated Services (DiffServ)
New Revenue Generating Services
Label stacking for scalability

Slide 2Meeting carrier objectives:
MPLS technology Components•

Control component (control plane)– Label binding concept per flow or per “Forwarding Equivalence Class”(FEC)– Allows various applications:

••
•
•
•

Traffic engineering
Service provisioning (in a scalable fashion)
Differentiated Services (& Quality of Service)
Restoration Services

Forwarding component (data plane)– Label swapping paradigm••

Per-label forwarding and queuing
Efficient look-up and forwarding

Slide 3Current Interoperability Initiatives• IOL, UNH - Initial RSVP-TE, LDP & CR-LDP testing• EANTC - RSVP-TE, LDP & CR-LDP, BGP/MPLS
VPN testing• AIL, GMU - RSVP-TE, LDP, BGP/MPLS VPNtesting• Isocore - Layer 2 over MPLS, RSVP-TE Fast
Reroute testing• Also N+I iLABs holds public MPLS interop events• MPLS Forum’s goal is to bring achievements topublic viewSlide 4

Basic Terminology•••••••••

P - Provider Core Router
PE - Provider Edge Router
CE - Customer Edge Router
VPN - Virtual Private Network
BGP/MPLS VPN - Layer 3 MPLS VPN using BGP-4
VRF Table - VPN Routing and Forwarding Table
L2oMPLS - Layer 2 over MPLS Transport
EoMPLS - Ethernet over MPLS Transport“Martini Draft” - A draft proposing a L2oMPLS solution in this context only the Ethernet over MPLS part wasused.
Slide 5

The Interoperability Test Plan
• Technology– RSVP-TE Signaling Protocol– LDP Signaling Protocol– LDP over RSVP-TE Signaling• Services– Ethernet / VLAN over MPLS
– BGP/MPLS VPN

Slide 6

The Interoperability Test Plan
• Key Contributors:– Laurel Networks– Celox Networks– European Advanced Network Testing Center(EANTC)– University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab(IOL-UNH)– Agilent Technologies• Discussed on a series of conference calls!
Slide 7

The Testing• Signaling Protocol Testing– LDP– RSVP-TE• Round 1: One-on-One Testing
Router A

Router B• Round 2: Quad Testing
PE 1

P1

P2

PE 2

• Round 3: Putting the network together

Slide 8

The Demo Network• Building & Testing a Core Network– Based on results from Rounds 1 and 2, a corenetwork was constructed– Full mesh of RSVP-TE tunnels tested• Testing the Edge devices– One-on-one Services testing• Building & Testing the complete network– Connect the Edge devices to the Core network– Run Services over tunnels across the network
Slide 9

The Demo Network• The test scenarios looked like this - sometimes had
up to four P routers.
CEPEPP

PECE• All PE and P routers came from different vendors• Testing covered LDP, RSVP-TE, BGP/MPLS VPN
and Ethernet over MPLS
• Interfaces used in the network were POS OC-12 andOC-48 and Gigabit Ethernet

Slide 10

The 21 Companies•••••••••••

Agilent Technologies
AlcatelAvici Systems
Celox Networks
Charlotte's Web Networks
Ericsson
Extreme Networks
Foundry NetworksIntel
Ixia
Juniper•
•••
•
••
•
•
•

Laurel Networks
Lucent Technologies
Mahi Networks
Marconi Communications
NettestRiverstone
Spirent Communications
Tenor Networks
Unisphere
VivaceSlide 11

The Edge Devices
Network Equipment:

Provider Edge Emulators:

••
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•
••
•
•
•

•
•
•
•
•

Celox SCX 192
Extreme BlackDiamond
Foundry NetIron 400
Juniper M5Laurel ST200
Lucent Springtide 7000
Mahi Mi7Riverstone RS8000
Tenor TN250G
Unisphere ERX 1400
Vivace Viva 1050

Agilent RouterTester 900
Intel® MPLS Signaling Protocol
Ixia 1600
Nettest InterEmulator
Spirent Adtech AX4000

Customer Edge Emulators:••••

Traffic Generators
Agilent RouterTester 900
Ixia 1600
Adtech AX4000

Slide 12

The Core Devices
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Alcatel 7670
Alcatel 7770
Avici SSR
Charlotte's Web Aranea-1
Ericsson AXI 540
Foundry NetIron 800
Intel® MPLS Signaling Protocol
Juniper M20
Lucent TMX 880
Marconi ASX4000
Riverstone RS38000
Tenor TN250G

Slide 13`Slide 14

The Results - issues identified• OSPF Traffic Engineering extensions• LDP Modes of Operation• RSVP-TE Reservation Style• RSVP-TE Explicit Route• RSVP-TE Reservation Confirmation info.
• Label EngineSlide 15

OSPF-TE Issue•

Issue– TE extensions to OSPF are not supported by all equipment– They are mandatory for some equipment to set up RSVP-TE LSPs•

Temporary resolution– Used a device that supports OSPF-TE, but does not require it to be
used in between the device that requires OSPF-TE and the device
that does not support it.

•Recommendation– TE extensions should not be mandatory in equipment

Slide 16LDP Issue•Issue– Some vendor implementations only support label distribution ofDoD or DU (irrespective of interface types).

•Temporary resolution– No resolution possible•

Recommendation– Recommendations in in RFC-3036 need to be followed to prevent
this from occurring.

Slide 17

RSVP-TE Reservation Style Issue•Issue– Some vendors implementations are inflexible since they only
support FF or SE style reservations.

•Temporary resolution– No resolution possible•

Recommendation– Recommendations of RFC-3209 stating that the receiver
determines the reservation style need to be followed and acceptedby the sender

Slide 18

RSVP-TE ERO Issue•Issue– ERO is supported but the IP address contained in the ERO may be
incoming address of the next hop router or the outgoing address of
the router or the loopback interface of the next hop router.

•Temporary resolution– In many sections of the network, we did not build TE LSPs withEROs due to these incompatibility.

•Recommendation– More discussion is necessary to what these addresses need to beand which ones are valid.

Slide 19

RSVP-TE RESV_CONFIRM Issue•Issue– Some routers support the sending of the RESV_CONFIRM object
while other do not.

•Temporary resolution– The RESV_CONFIRM was disabled were it could be and in othercases there was no resolution.

•Recommendation– The object should be configurable or ignored by the receiver.

Slide 20

Label Engine Issue•Issue– Some vendor implementations did not support the explicit null label.

•Temporary resolution– Routers were configured to not send explicit null label.

•Recommendation– All routers need to support the explicit null label.

Slide 21

Next Steps•

A small number of outstanding issues which need to be resolved
quickly– Need to be addressed from implementation perspective– To help interoperability and easy deployment(to not have to fix problems after deployment)• The results are part of an IETF draft:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-jensen-mpls-interop-00.txt• The draft was presented at the IETF meeting in Japan in theMPLS WG to initiate discussions to firm up therecommendations

Slide 22

Meeting carrier objectives:
MPLS technology Components•

Control component (control plane)– Label binding concept per flow or per “Forwarding Equivalence Class”(FEC)– Allows various applications:••••••

Traffic engineering
Service provisioning
Service scalability
Differentiated Services (& Quality of Service)
Restoration Services

Forwarding component (data plane)– Label swapping paradigm• Label Stacking••

Per-label forwarding and queuing
Efficient look-up and forwarding
Slide 23

Recent GMPLS Interoperability Event• GMPLS Interoperability test event held at
UNH-IOL in October, showcased at NGN 2002
• Full Peer model demonstrated• Signaling and OC-48 data plane tested• Seven participants:– Edge Devices - Cisco, Juniper– Edge Emulators - Agilent, Data Connection,
Netplane, Nettest– Core Device - Sycamore Networks
Slide 24

GMPLS Test Configuration
Edge LSR
Core LSR

Netplane
LTCS™-OpticalAgilent
RouterTester900

Signaling Plane Connectivity
Data Flow Paths
Sycamore
SN 16000

Agilent
RouterTester900
Data Connection
DC-MPLS
Sycamore
SN 16000
Sycamore
SN 16000

Cisco 12404

NettestInterEMULATOR

Juniper M10

Data Connection
DC-MPLS

Netplane
LTCS™-OpticalSlide 25

Links• To learn more about the MPLS Interoperability Event,visit: http://www.mplsforum.org/Supercomm.htm• To download the white paper on the MPLS
Interoperability event with more details, please visit:
http://www.mplsforum.org/whitepaper_info.html• To learn more about the GMPLS Interoperability Event,visit: http://www.mplsforum.org/NGN2002demo.html• To download the white paper on the GMPLS
Interoperability event with more details, please visit:
http://www.mplsforum.org/GMPLSwhitepaper.pdf
Slide 26

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