WAN Technology and L3 Routing Question
Hi All,
I have a question with regards to using Frame-Relay/MPLS over L3 Routing Protocols (ie. RIP, OSPF, EIGRP etc.). Can someone please correct me if I get this wrong...I would like to be enlightened more.
1. Is Frame-Relay the same as MPLS in terms of L2 style of packet forwarding?
2. Do we use Frame-Relay, ATM, MPLS mainly to forward packet instead of relying to L3 Routing Protocols?
3. Is this how Network Engineers normally design networks?
Again, I would really appreciate some insights from experience professionals. Because the thing is, I keep on doing labs and practicing either Frame-Relay or MPLS and/or OSPF, EIGRP etc..but I do not fully understand how they work together in real world. A great feedback from CCNP would be awesome! I know a lot of us here have this kind of question in mind.
I have a question with regards to using Frame-Relay/MPLS over L3 Routing Protocols (ie. RIP, OSPF, EIGRP etc.). Can someone please correct me if I get this wrong...I would like to be enlightened more.
1. Is Frame-Relay the same as MPLS in terms of L2 style of packet forwarding?
2. Do we use Frame-Relay, ATM, MPLS mainly to forward packet instead of relying to L3 Routing Protocols?
3. Is this how Network Engineers normally design networks?
Again, I would really appreciate some insights from experience professionals. Because the thing is, I keep on doing labs and practicing either Frame-Relay or MPLS and/or OSPF, EIGRP etc..but I do not fully understand how they work together in real world. A great feedback from CCNP would be awesome! I know a lot of us here have this kind of question in mind.
Comments
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tomtom1
Member Posts: 375
MPLS was originally developed to be faster than forwarding based on L3 information, however, with the current hardware this isn't the biggest advantage of MPLS. Because the MPLS header fields come after the L2 header, it can also transport other protocols over a common infrastructure (MPLS based), if you want to do multicast over MPLS, you can. Normal IPv4 unicast? Sure, why not? Connecting customer sites over the common infrastructure (MPLS L2 or L3 vpn) you can. It really is scaleable and protocol independent and that's the biggest advantage of MPLS.